Saturday, September 11, 2010

Take a look at this beautiful video of Maggie. You may need some tissues. Also, at the end it shows the flyer for "Hope for Maggie II" It's another fundraiser for Maggie so she is able to experience all sorts of things while she's still here. :) She's a beautiful little girl with such an amazing spirit, you can't help but fall in love with her. So help her make the most of her life! :) Thank you!
http://gallery.me.com/paintedpelican#100210

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Help a family!

Help a family raise money to adopt a little girl from Eastern Europe that has down syndrome. Take a look at this blog and it's auction items. There are also two photography sessions by me up for auction. Take a look and place your bid on all these cute items!! Thanks everyone!

http://www.bringmakaylamariehome.blogspot.com/

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Salt Lake County Fair

Well some fun good news! I entered 3 pictures into the Salt Lake County Fair in 3 different categories, and I got 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place!! I was super surprised! But I thought I'd share the pics, so here they are! Enjoy!:)

Female Portrait


1st Place

Kids Portrait


2nd Place

Creative


3rd Place

Now maybe I'll have the courage to enter in some more important photography contests... We'll see :)

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Latest Update on Maggie


So not really sure how to update our cardiology appt today. It was really overwhelming and a little scary, okay really scary. But I'm glad the doctor just told us how it is. So for this appt our nurse Deb came with me and Maggie. Well, we started with having an echo done and I expected everything to be okay with that and it just showing her normal PFO. We went back to the room and had an EKG and waited for the cardiologist to come in to give us the results of the echo and EKG. So she finally came in and said that she had received the results of the biopsy and said she was going to talk to another cardiologist about what needs to happen next. So anyway then she continues to tell us that Maggies echo was worse than her last echo and that looking at this shows that this is why her other organs are all having trouble. Maggies septum in her heart is not working as well. She asked me how invasive we wanted to go with Maggie and I said that we don't want to be too invasive because of all of her problems the outcome would not be very good. But that we would need to discuss everything as things came along. She absolutely agreed with me and said that she would not do a transplant on Maggie and she would not do a pacemaker on Maggie because she does not think Maggie would make it through that process and because if she did make it she would have deteriorated a lot to have made it and her life would not be good. So then she tells us that what we want to hope happens is that when its time, Maggie gets an arrhythmia and that is how she goes because it will be painless. Not sure what to think about this. I think I may have been in a little shock at this point. She says that she is going to see Maggie one more time and then she will probably transfer her care over to the heart failure doctor. Maggie is not in heart failure yet but apparently that is where she is headed. She tells us that because of her heart this is part of what is causing Maggie to have trouble digesting. So basically there is nothing we can do about that. There are a few meds that we could try to help the heart but there is nothing we can do to fix the heart. However she doesn't think Maggie can take the meds for this because Maggie has such a low heart rate. These meds will make it slower and she will need to be watched super closely if this is what is decided to do. She says that we can not put Maggie back on TPN because not only of the liver problems but because she gets infections so easily. If her heart rate goes high like when she gets infections she said that this is when the arrhythmia will happen which will mean Maggie will not make it. So not only can we not have her heart rate low, now we have to watch so carefully that it doesn't go too high. So she said that there is really no way to get Maggie to keep her weight or gain really. Basically, she says that we are going to watch Maggie starve to death which will make her heart give out. Unless another doctor can come up with some other way to get her to digest or get her calories without a central line. So there is nothing we can do about it. It is so frustrating to know the plan of your childs death and not be able to do anything about it. I can't even explain the feeling I have or how to move on with daily things right now. My head is just spinning in circles trying to come up with something. The cardiologist asked us what we were going to do for Maggies Make a Wish and we told her we were planning to go to Disney World (Thanks Brienn I am seriously going to email you soon I'm just spacey) the cardiologist thought that this would be great for Maggie but then asks us when we are going and we told her that Maggie has to be 2 1/2 to 3 to have a wish and her response was "push to get it done sooner!" We told her that we had tried to talk to someone about doing that and they said we couldn't and she said yes we can and that we need to push it get it sooner. I guess she doesn't think Maggies quality of life will be good at all in December so she wants us to do this trip as soon as we can.

So, so far all of Maggies doctors that we have seen agree that we need to make Maggie as comfortable as we can so she is not suffering. Its so hard for people to understand that although Maggie looks okay on the outside her insides are not well. She has lost weight and is not looking quite as good now and we are going to continue to see this. Maggie is way small for a two year old. On our scale at home Maggie is under 18 lbs, she is going to be 26 months next week and she is starting to lose weight quicker than she has been. We have made a followup appt with Dr Shoffner in Atlanta for the end of September. Our cardiologist wants us to see if he has any other ideas on what we can do to get calories in her since he also does not want her on TPN. I am praying that he can think of something and fast.

Maggie will be having the colonoscopy and endoscopy to make sure things look okay from that standpoint. This will be on Thursday, which she will also have some blood tests done and urine tests done. These things will check organ function. Being sedated is very scary for people with mitochondrial disease so please pray things go well with this. Please also just keep Maggie in your thoughts and prayers for this news that we have received today. We appreciate all of the love and support and being surrounded by such amazing people. Our neighbors all pitched in and got us a Flip camera so we can record everything. We are so thankful for this and can't even describe how amazing everyone has been. Also thank you to our nurse for coming with me to that appt, I don't think either one of us were expecting to hear what we did. Thank you all so much!!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

So....

Why is it so easy for me to read everyone's blogs, yet I never can update mine!?!? Maybe it's just because my life isn't all the exciting. Well, I'm here to tell you that that is going to change! Hopefully.... I'm not making any promises hahaha I'm not going to update from where I left off because then I will never get caught up. So I will update with the latest fun event. My birthday! It was a great day full of pedicures, food, golf and of course a movie. All in good fun and with some pretty awesome people! Take a look at the pics! Oh.... I may back track next time just to update my New York trip as well :)

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Santa Visits!!

Yes, I know..... Still catching up! :)
The Agnew's had a great surprise this Christmas! Since it isn't best for Maggie to go outdoors during RSV season, especially to be around a ton of sick kids and germs. They had a surprise visit at their house! Santa stopped by!! How exciting!! Well, I think Hailey was the only one truly excited Taveon and Maggie weren't so sure about him haha you can tell by the pictures. But Santa still gave them all a gift and best wishes. Pictures tell all, so take a look!



Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Work Christmas Party

This year, our work Christmas party was at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. There was dinner and dancing. It was alright. Afterwards, a few of us met up at "Keys on Main" to finish up the night. We had some fun. Here are some pics!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was great! We all had a great time. It's always fun to be with family. :) Even though the end of the day wasn't so great....when I got home..... But the rest of the day was a blast, I helped my mom with the dinner and made a new yummy dessert! We visited and played fun games, it was great :)

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Chad's Married!!!!

Ok ok... I know, I'm really late at posting all these great events!! But here's a great post.... Chad Hatch got married!!!!! How awesome is that?? Another one of my best friends got hitched! He married a great girl, Kandace!! We love her and I'm so happy for the both of them! At the luncheon, Chad sang to her. How precious is that? He did a wonderful job as well. :) Congrats you two! Love you both!

Taveon's Birthday!

I was able to go over to my sister's house for my nephew, Taveon's, birthday. He was turning 3! He's such a stud.... This birthday was fun because he got some awesome drums!! He loves them! I think he had a pretty good birthday. You take a look and let me know if you think the same.....

Be Prepared!!

This next week, I'm going to try and update the past few months with some pictures as well. Because we all know how much I love pictures! :) So this is just the beginning. I'm going to start back in October, right before I got the swine flu :)
At work, we had a group "party" thing on the 22nd of October. So we went to Fat Cats, where we had pizza and salad for lunch then went and bowled!!! We thought we'd make it a little more entertaining by buying awesome boas and sunglasses. It was Halloween time after all ;-) So here are some awesome pics of one fun day!


Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Quick Recap!

Alright, I promised I would update, so here it goes.... The last time I have posted was back in October... A lot has been going on since then to keep me busy. Over Halloween, I got the swine flu, yep, that's right, the swine flu.. I was way sick for a couple days and had a fever that just wouldn't go away. One day, my fever finally went down, then shot back up to 102. My sister, Michelle, urged me everyday to go to the doctor or the ER. But me, being who I am that doesn't go to doctors when she is sick, just kept putting it off. Saying, "it's too late to get an antibiotic now", or "what are they going to do to help me?". Well one day, I was just walking around the house and I had a really hard time breathing. So I called my mom to take me to the ER. Even while I was sitting in the waiting room I kept thinking that they were just going to send me home. It was finally my turn to go back, I said that it was possible that I had the swine flu, of course the nurse just looked at me and didn't believe me. She then had me take my jacket off and she said that my skin was burning hot. So she got her little thermometer thing that they slide across your forehead and she started freaking out. Which in turn I got really scared. My fever was at 105 and she said that my vitals were reading that I should have been seizureing right then. She started panicking saying that I was really really sick and they hadn't seen someone that sick in a really long time. She was trying to keep me calm, yet she was in panic mode. She hurried and rushed me back to a room and told me to strip down, 3 other nurses were right there with her putting cold rags all over my body and getting me hooked up to an IV. Nothing like this has ever happened to me so I was really scared and it all happened so fast. The doctor came in and talked to me, I had an EKG done and X-rays. The nurses were asking if I was delirious or hallucinating. As far as I knew, I wasn't :) The nurses also kept saying they couldn't believe how good I looked for how sick I was so they had a hard time believing it. I sat in the hospital with an IV for 4 hours, so I had 4 huge bags of liquid pumped into me, my eyes started to look swollen by the time I had left. From then on out, I took extra strength Tylenol every 4 hours just to make sure my fever didn't come back. So lesson learned... Even if you don't think you're that sick. Be aware of your symptoms and how long they last and get to the doctor if someone tells you that you should, because they can usually see more than we do. The worst part about this all, is that my mom made an AWESOME Lucy costume this year!!! I was so excited to wear it!! It's from the "Lucy's Rumba" episode, she did an amazing job on it. Maybe next year.....

In November, I had another big event! Not one I'm happy about though. So Thanksgiving day I was over at my Mom's for the majority of the day helping cook dinner and I made some desserts and everything. I stayed there until about 11:00 PM. I then decided to go home. When I got home, I started playing the piano for a bit, then decided to check my email, I went over and got on my laptop and it wasn't connecting to the internet. I thought that was really weird because it usually connects as soon as I open my laptop. I look over to where our wireless router was and it was missing.. Really weird.. So I text my old roommate and my current roommate to see if they maybe took it or moved it or something, they didn't. I then looked around the house, we had just cleaned so everything was in it's place except one box in my closet. I called me mom and she got scared so she had me come stay with her for the night. The next day, I came home and called the police because I also realized that my external hard drive that had ALL my pictures on it was missing as well. Slowly we started to notice more and more things were missing, also that the bolt on the french doors in my bedroom was unlocked. I was more pissed than anything that someone would take the dang external hard drive because I had just barely transferred all of my pictures over to it. Anyway, the cops came, did nothing really and left. I then got ready for the day and headed to my sisters because I was supposed to stay the night over there. The next day, I headed home, when I got there the house had been broken into again.... Yep, two days in a row!! Are you kidding me!?!?! This time I was a little more scared, I was the stupid girl in the movies that checks all the closets and everything instead of getting out of there. I was ready to kick some Butt!!!! This time, they took all of our bras and underwear, clean and dirty! That's a little unnerving.. So I called the cops again, they couldn't believe this was the second call two days in a row, they just kept saying it was someone we knew who knows when we are home or not. That's not a very good feeling to think that someone is watching you. So I didn't stay there for a few nights, we safe proofed the house in a lot of ways. Then I decided that they were not going to kick me out of my own house, there is no way I was going to be too scared to live there, I wasn't going to let that happen. So I had my brother give me and the house a blessing, then stayed the night there. WORST NIGHT OF MY LIFE!!!!!! So freakin' scary. Because whoever this was coming in, either came in or went out the doors in my bedroom, I slept maybe 1-2 hours all night, I woke up to every sound and the motion sensor lights even went on in the backyard, I had my mom's dog, but she is a big baby so she wouldn't have done much. She didn't even hear the noises I heard. The whole night I laid on my back watching both doors saying that I could not live in fear like that. I was tempted to leave and go to my Mom's or brothers but I was too scared to even get out of the bed. Needless to say, I didn't go back.... And that's why you may not see pictures, I'm still trying to clean that mess up.

December.... I moved out and back into Melissa's. While I'm really grateful for them and letting me live with them....again..... I'm totally mad and frustrated about the whole situation. I LOVED living in that house and me and my roommate got along great! It just really pisses me off that it had to happen.. I know everything happens for a reason, I just can't wait to find out why this happened.... There is some good news in December :) My sister Melanie and her husband Travis came out for Christmas!! It was really good to see them and fun to have them out here, we sure do miss them!! :) Christmas was good, we all had a lot of fun. We went to my brothers and played his new rockband that they got for Christmas, it was a blast :).

Today... Well I guess most recent of events, I've just been working and going to school, nothing too exciting but I'm hoping to go to St. George next month and also New York in June!!!! Wahoo!!!! I need to get out of here, I can hardly wait!!! All in all, things are good :) I'll just have to sift through my pictures to see if I have any recent ones and post them. I'm sure I have something. I'll try to be more up to date. Sorry for the novel, but you asked for it! ;-) hehehe jk

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Wow!!

Who's ready for me to update!?!?! Ya, me too.... Hopefully I'll get some time this week... Till then! :)