Jacob 's Birthday

Okay so I am a bad mom blogger. I am just now getting around to getting Jacob's birthday pictures posted. Sorry for the delay. He had a wonderful day. We will be celebrating Thanksgiving with all the kids home and my dad is coming. We also have our beloved friend Shirley living with us now. What a blessing she is to our family.

The Birthday boy

Buzz Lightyear cake

The Party Crew

More Pizza

A little miniature Golf with the Crew

We are working on changing Kailyn's medicine again. She is seemingly doing a little better on this dosage. She was using all of her time released medicine up in the morning. So we are doing short acting three times a day. Seems a little better.

Alyssa is doing well.

Jaryd is counting down the days until his birthday. He can't wait.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving.

Love

The Huckabee's

Here is a picture of the kids the day before we went to the zoo for the Halloween party. That was fun. We spent Halloween at the UTEP football game and then on to the church for our annual Light Shine Trunk or Treat. We celebrated Kevin's birthday on Sunday evening with steaks and a German Chocolate cake. The kids seemed to enjoy all of them.

Everyone is doing well. Kailyn and I are home tonight from church because she is running a low grade fever. Can't be to careful. Don't want to infect anyone. I do think that she has a UTI. So we will probably see the doctor tomorrow for some more antibiotics. I have scheduled an appointment with the Urologist for her, but they can't see her until December 29th. Wow! It is so hard to get in to the specialists. I am going to see if the Pediatrician can get us anything sooner.

Have a blessed week. Talk to you guys again soon. Watch out for the Flu.

Tammy

Exiciting and Emotional

We have been very busy since my last post. We spent a week in Pagosa Springs, CO for the kids fall break. The colors of fall were just beautiful there. We took the train from Durango to Silverton. Of which Jaryd said that was the most boring thing he had done. Makes me not want to plan any more vacations. So needless to say we were a little frustrated with the whole trip. The condo was beautiful and we were right on the lake. The kids got to experience fishing for the first time. Dad had a great time teaching them the ropes. They could have just spent time fishing. They didn't care if we did anything else.

Kailyn ended up in the emergency room on Monday morning in Pagosa. She was running a fever and had a cough that sounded like croup. After about an hour the doctor said it was just viral, continue what I was doing and sent us home. She improved every day after that. I was afraid that she would go into pnuemonia, so that is why that I went to the ER. Better safe than sorry.

Reports card came out this week and we were very pleased with all the results. Everyone seems to be doing really well in school. Alyssa had two weeks off for fall break, so she was home again this week. We had some good alone time with her. Although she really like to have her siblings around. She is definately happy about their prescence.

We have been fighting a battle with Kailyn on her eating. We decided on Monday after days of mom crying that we were going to just let her eat what she wants. No more focusing on the closing of her mouth and continual badgering to eat. So that was the plan on Monday. Well Tuesday morning she got up in her little funk that she has. She has a lot of crankiness and then she starts vomiting and has diarehea. The doctor seems to think that she has some kind of insulin problem when she starts this. So the day of not making her eat caused her to bottom out the next morning. So that didn't seem to work. We have decided that we are just going to give her the amount of food on her plate that she should eat and then she will have to sit there until it is gone. No prodding just a gentle reminder before she gets up that she will have to clean her plate. We can't have her bottoming out on her sugar. Thursday night she actually finished her food before Jacob. So maybe we are making some progress. I have to say I have to have some relief. I cannot live having such a battle at every meal. One year of this has taken it's toll on mom. So pray that things will continue to get better. She is having a power struggle with us, and we have to stand firm.

Nana gave Kevin and I a day off yesterday. She kept the girls and then picked up the boys when they got out of school. Kevin and I went to lunch at PeiWei, then to the phone store to get my phone fixed, then to the nail salon for nails and a pedicure, and then to the movies to see Couples Retreat. What an awesome renewal day. Boy did we need it. Kevin even got a pedicure and did some shopping at Sears tool department. His favorite thing to do.

Here are a few pictures from our trip.

Teaching them how to cast.

Fishing for Jaryd, Jacob, and Alyssa
Not Kailyn's thing.

Stringer of Fish for our Fishermen and Women

Our bored train riders

A view from the train ride.

Notice the Rainbow

View from our Balcony

Our Condo

Have a blessed week. We will be busy as we have Halloween and Kevin's birthday on the same day.

Tammy

Kailyn celebrated her 4th birthday last Saturday. I have been so busy this week that I didn't get to post anything since. Here are some pictures from last year's birthday and this year's birthday. What a wonderful change she has made.

It is hard sometimes to see the change day to day, but this is an amazing change. Now that we seem to have all the infections cleared up in her body, we hope that she will start to gain. We would really like for her to get a little weight on before we give her the growth hormones. I am afraid if she goes up any she will really look like a bean pole. I have spent the last week remaking all her pants so that she can keep them up. It wasn't so bad this summer, I could guy six month shorts and they were okay because they were shorts, but that won't work with pants. She looks like she has on high waters if I don't get her 2T. But, they are so big in the waist. So we are now ready for winter. I hope that the pants that I fixed don't last long. That will mean that she is gaining some weight.

All the rest of us seem to be doing well. Will post more later.

Tammy

Positive Results

We got a call from the doctor last night and Kailyn does have Turner's Syndrome. So now we will start the treatment for growth Hormones. She will not need anything else for about 8 more years. We will also have an ecocardiogram on Kailyn. Turner's Syndrome patients tend to have heart problems.

Tammy

A Little more news

I haven't posted in awhile. Just can't seem to sit long enough to think about posting.

Jaryd
We had teacher conferences this week and he is doing wonderfully in school. Last year I was the spelling natzi. We would practice words all the way to school every morning. He didn't seem to want to let me do that this year, so I told him that if he made good grades on his spelling test that I would leave him alone. Well, since the beginning of the year we haven't seen any spelling tests. So when I visited with his teacher this week I asked how he was doing. He has all 100 and only on 93. So I told him as along as he continued to do this well on his own, I would allow him to continue his method of studying. Pretty good for a kid who didn't speak any English a year ago. He is also doing really well in all of his classes. He is a math whiz. He is healthy and continuing to do well on his medication. We have those morning with pre-medication and the late evenings that tend to give us all a headache. But, we are trying to teach him to manage these times by himself.

Jacob
He had his eye surgery and did really well. They did over medicate him with anesthesia and we had a rough day until that was out of his system. But, the surgery went perfectly. He is doing well in school. I don't think he is quite where he should be so we are going to do tutoring after school two days a week. We will see how this goes. If he doesn't make any progress we will take him out and try some private tutoring. That seemed to work the best to get Jaryd off on the right foot. Jacob has been diagnosed with Asperger's. So we are learning all of the ins and outs of that. I dont' remember if I have posted about this before or not. It is a little hard to remember what you have done when you have four running around. He only has a mild case of Asperger's and is managing very well.

Alyssa
She is loving school. We also had a teacher's conference with her teacher. The teacher said her only complaint about Alyssa is that she is too sweet. It seems as if one of the little boys has been picking on everyone and Alyssa is too kind to tell her to leave her alone. The teacher said she needed to be a little more stern with him. So I have given her permission to tell him not to touch her. He seem to want to touch everyone all day. They administered a test at the beginning of the year to see where she was. On some of the tests she seemed to be at the 10 year old level. I am not surprised. She has been grown up since she was 1.

Kailyn
We have had a few more ups and downs with her. She was diagnosed last week with H Pylori. That is the infection in the stomach that causes Ulcers. We are doing the two week treatment and that seem to be clearing up. They said she had had it for a long time. The only way to find this out is with the biopsy. So that is what the results of the biopsy were. Then we took her to the Pediatric Endocrinologist later that week. He thinks, no a definite diagnosis yet, that she has Turner's Syndrome (http://www.turnersyndrome.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40&Itemid=57. You can click on the pink link and read about the diagnosis. We will know more in a few weeks when the results of the DNA testing comes back. If so she will have quite a long road to hoe over the next few years. But, with any luck she can begin to grow with the help of some Growth Hormones. We do not see this as a setback, but as a way to help her move on with her life. Hopefully after the H Pylori is dead in her body we can get her to gain some weight. She is also doing well in school. Her teacher said she has changed greatly since last year.

We have had a great year. Can't believe that next weekend will be one year home. We will try to post more later. Have a great week.
Tammy

Family for One Year

It has been an emotional year. Some days are beautiful and some days you look around and wonder what in the world have we done. We always hold on to the faith that this was God's plan. I must admit the bad days are beginning to slow down. We are still in the midst of doctor's appointments and medical procedures. But, we didn't think these would things would go quickly. It requires time to see what all needs to be fixed. We are finished with all of Jaryd's health issues. There is nothing wrong with him now that we had his tonsils taken out. Jacob will always have to deal with the Asperger's, but hopefully he will continue to learn to cope with that in time. We are finally learning how to deal better with his melt-downs. Kailyn still has some kind of problem, we think, with her food processing. Hopefully in the next coupld of weeks will have some answers for this. She is still not gaining any weight. In fact, she has lost about a 1/2 a pound again. So we are still just kind of in the midst of normal kid health issues. We just never had four of them in the house at one time before. Seems as though we are always going to doctor's apopintments.

The kids have adjusted to being Americans very well. Jacob saw a picture of the Ukraine the other day and said, "I think I have been there before." Now you know why we call him airhead some days. We are such a world away from being in that country. Some day I hope that we can go back there and visit and take things to help both of the orphanages that gave us our children. Some days I wonder if their mother still wonders where they are. Does she care? Is she still alive? Where are their fathers? Do they wonder about their children?

We thank God that he gave us these children to incorporate into our family. While singing in praise band on Sunday I looked into the audience to see my three oldest children and my son's wife(my other daughter) to just smile at God's Awesome love for Kevin and I. Jaryd, Jacob and Kailyn fit in so well with all of the kids.

Jaryd was talking this morning before school and couldn't remember how to say any words in Ukranian. He says that he can understand it, he just can't speak it.

Happy "Family Day"

Pretty amazing when you go from three kids to six in just two hours time. I wish pregnancy and labor could have gone that fast. I probably would have had twenty kids in that case. Oh wait, not, I don't think so. Where has my sanity gone. Six is enough. We will wait for grand kids now. Hopefully that will be a few more years.

Thanks to everyone who has helped this been such a fantastic year in our lives and our childrens lives. thanks for all the bloggers who have helped us through times we didn't think we could make it through.

Here are some pictures, before and after.