A Busy Couple of Weeks

We've had so much going on since our last post. The kids are so excited to be out of quarantine! Things that most of us would take for granted have been huge highlights for them, like being able to ride on an escalator or actually go inside a restaurant to eat. They can't believe that they are allowed to touch things and have friends over. With the good also comes the not so good, Thomas has been throwing up all day today and the kids have had a few colds already. On the upside, the twins have not been even close to being hospitalized and so we're happy. In fact we want the sickness now so that they will be even stronger come next winter.

Other good news, we took Abigail and Amelia to Primary Children's Hospital to see the GI doctor. At 2 years the doctors expect that preemies should be caught up, however our twins are way below the growth curve (17lbs and 18lbs at 24 months adjusted). This has caused some concern and some blood tests a couple of months ago had indicated that they had an immune deficiency which combined with their low weights could indicate the possibility of celiac disease. Well the good news is that we took their blood again and they do NOT have an immune deficiency nor celiac disease. Hooray! I really was preparing myself for a lifetime of hospital visits and a gluten-free lifestyle, which would have been super challenging. So this was great news! In the end, the doctor is having us try an appetite stimulator to see if we can get some fat on the girls. We haven’t noticed much change yet, they have always been pretty good eaters (not picky at all) so we’ll see.

So you may be wondering what we have been doing to keep up so busy the last few weeks. For starters, we had a super fun reunion with my parents and siblings (minus Veronica’s family because poor Hazel had a terrible cold and their very considerate family didn’t want to give us their germs our first week out of quarantine). My parents rented a beautiful house located just outside of St. George (Utah). Just being around family away from home was the highlight for me, although hiking around Snow Canyon (amazingly beautiful and accessible even to 4-year-olds), seeing petroglyphs up close, taking the kids to the splash-pad to play for the first time in over a year, playing games, and riding bikes in the cool evening was so much fun for all of us.

 

After the trip we spent a day in Salt Lake visiting the zoo and temple square (including the children’s museum which was so much fun for the kids and free to boot), we’ve roasted hotdogs and smores in our fire-pit, Jared has made some paths in our yard with pavers, and we were also able to go to church as an entire family.

Yesterday we had a wonderful visit from Jared’s mom and her sister Ruth. We took them to the local tourist attraction, the Lavender Farm and had a picnic. I love to go to the lavender farm because of the beautiful landscaping, animals, paddleboats, mini-western town and wagons, mini-medieval village, and on top of it all there’s nobody there and it’s free. We had such a wonderful visit.