Baby Tucker

I was finally able to take some photos of Tucker so I can get a birth announcement put together.  I figured I should try to get it done before it gets too close to his birthday.  I thought I would give everyone a quick preview of some of the photos I took.  I don't want to brag, but I think I sure ended up with some cute boys!

Back from Seattle

It was a fast and furious trip to Seattle, but we made it back and settled back into the routine of things.

Before we left for Seattle, though, we had to make a trip to the fair.  Every year we have to make at least one trip to the Western Idaho Fair. We go mainly for the food (cause that is the real reason for the fair, right?), but Josh really likes to ride the rides, and every year since he was two he has ridden the ponies.  This year was Jacob's first year to ride them.  He seemed to have a pretty good time, and hung on pretty well by himself (although Rick walked beside him the whole time to make sure).  It was 98 degrees outside that day, but the boys enjoyed riding some rides anyway, and when we needed to cool off, we went inside the expo buildings to see the award winning vegetables and look at the photographs.  We used to enter all of that stuff, but unfortunately the last couple of years we have had other issues keeping us from getting any vegis or photos ready to enter.  Maybe one of these years we will get back to our gardening and such.  Joshua also got to play ball with a seal.  He had a good time throwing the ball to the seal and then the seal would throw it back to him (how often can you do that in Boise?).

Tuesday morning we left for Seattle.  We rolled out of town at a bright and early 11:30 am.  We wanted to leave earlier, but for some reason (with three boys) we could not seem to get it done.  The drive up wasn't too bad and seemed to go along pretty well, at least the first part of the trip.  By late afternoon, it was evident that neither Jacob or Joshua was going to sleep in the car.  I don't know what it is about my boys, but they seem to have a thing about not sleeping in the car. For the last part of the trip we heard a lot of "are we there yet", every half hour from Joshua, and yells from Jacob (just as soon as Tucker would fall asleep) just because he was bored, which of course would send Tucker into a crying fit.  We finally made it and got settled in for the night, only for Jacob to be up half the night unable to sleep in the blow up bed we had for him (on the bright side, Tucker slept the whole night from 11 pm until 7 am for the first time).

In the hospital gown waiting for the MRI

Wednesday started out at the hospital with an MRI for Jacob.  He had been getting over a cold, so they had some question about whether or not they could put him under the anesthesia, but they decided it was worth it to try.  He did great and came out of it just fine.  We then met with the Rehab Doctor and she was pleased with Jacob's progress.  After that came a meeting with the Neurosurgeon who did Jacob's surgery.  He showed us some of the MRI pictures and told us everything looked great.  We ended it with a meeting with the Neurologist who is also the epilepsy specialist.  He played with Jacob and we talked about when we would get Jacob on a step down schedule for the medicine he is on now.  They want to see us back in 4 or 5 months and that is when we can plan to take Jacob off his last anti seizure med that he is still on.  All in all it was great news and we were all worn out from the day (and all very hungry because they did not plan lunch or a nap in the day for us).  We did make a trip to the rehab floor where we spent a month living to see all of his nurses and therapists.  We were able to see a good number of them and they were very excited to see Jacob walking around their halls.  He was so tired though, he was a bit more wobbly than normal and he did not want to cooperate and say the words he has been using here. 
The drive home was similar to the one on the way to Seattle, but I was finally able to get Jacob to take a nap for part of the trip, so it was a bit less noisy for a while.  We got home and got settled to bed and everyone slept pretty well.  We took Friday to just recover from our short, but long trip.

Sooo tired when we got back from the hospital