I'm not sure quite what to say about this Christmas break... we spent lots of time together, and Christmas itself was great... and we got lots of fun presents... and it was white....
This will be quite the assortment of pictures from the last couple of weeks- mostly taken by kids, using weird iPad picture stuff, obviously. Because our house doesn't really have red walls....
Christmas with Eliza was fun- she was a great age for it this year. So fun to have a little one to open presents and get excited about surprises inside!
Our Christmas Eve was very fun- Grandma Shipley was going to come for it, since Mom and Dad were out of town, but it snowed all day and she didn't feel safe going out, so we visited her, instead- it was so fun to visit her and share a little of our Christmas Eve celebration with her!
Everything ended up feeling a little rushed, since Rebekah actually had to work for 2 hours that evening- from 6-8. Everyone at Little Caesar's worked a short shift so no one had to be there all night. We dropped Rebekah off, went to Grandma's, came home and waited for Rebekah to get off, then crammed all our our normal Christmas Eve stuff into a short time!
Here are the Christmas pj's:
An interesting picture of our Advent celebration:
And we also did our Nativity scene (with a very cute mini-shepherd complete with stuffed lamb), and doing stocking presents. I love Christmas Eve. :)
Christmas itself was fun:
Mostly lots of this:
and this:
We had a Christmas dinner with just us (everyone else in the family was out of town), and got up the next morning ready to have some adventures (or at least get out of the house). Plans changed quickly when Josh woke up disoriented and confused- it was very scary. Tim was at the store when it happened, and I called him and told him to come home because we needed to take Josh to the ER. As we were waiting for him, I had Josh put his shoes on. He did, but a minute later he said, "Mom, did I put those on?" We got him to Mom and Dad's for a blessing, and then to the hospital. I was worried that it was an aneurysm... or a blood clot... or a stroke... or something else equally serious. Didn't help that everyone else in the Primary presidency has had some major health emergency with a child in the last months... and I was wondering when my turn was coming! At the hospital, they did a CT scan, blood work, an EEG, urine tests (since 95% of issues like this with teenagers are related to drugs), neurological tests... and everything came back normal. In the meantime, as Tim and I sat in the room and talked to Josh, we realized that his issues all had to do with short-term memory. He could remember about 3 or 4 days before, but kept asking us what the date was, didn't remember that the day before had been Christmas, didn't remember any Christmas presents, asked us at least 75 times over 3 hours what time it was, and then had to be told that the clock was behind him every time... After the doctors had determined that nothing life-threatening was going on, I was able to relax a little and it got pretty funny... like when Josh suddenly noticed the IV in his arm- and didn't remember it being put in- "What IS that?!!"
After a couple of hours, we noticed that his memory was returning- instead of asking the same questions over and over again, he was telling us facts over and over- "Today is the 26th". "Yesterday was Christmas." "I got Lego Lord of the Rings for Christmas." And then he actually remembered to look behind him to see what time it was! :)
The ER doctor's best guess was that this was a TIA- sometimes called a pre-stroke or mini-stroke. He referred us to the TIA clinic in Provo and discharged us.
By the time we got home, Josh was back to normal. He has all of his memory back, except for that morning- he talks about "waking up" in the hospital.
When I got home and started my internet research to figure out what was up, I was doubtful that the TIA clinic was the right place for Josh. That was confirmed when a doctor from the clinic called me and said they really don't deal with pediatric patients (it would have been Josh and a bunch of 80 year olds! :) Instead, they made an appointment with us with the pediatric neurologist in Provo.
Josh continued to do well, although I was a little paranoid about letting him out of view- waiting until he woke up the next morning was pretty nerve-wracking for me. We've asked him how he feels a LOT since Wednesday!
On Sunday, I was reading more about memory issues on the internet, and found a description that TOTALLY fits what happened to Josh: Transient Global Amnesia. You can google it if you want details, but basically it's a short-lived amnesic episode that acts just like I've described. It is fairly rare, occurring in 5 out of every 100,000 people, usually happens to men between the ages of 50 and 80, and usually doesn't happen again (there is about a 5% recurrence rate). It isn't dangerous... just scary.
Anyway... if you made it through all that... we are going to the neurologist on Wednesday, and we'll see if he can tell us anything else!
So with that whole thing, and most of the family getting a cold/fever thing (one at a time, of course- no getting over it quickly), and the weather that kept snowing... and snowing... and snowing, most of our plans (zoo, Temple Square, etc.) didn't ever happen.
We did make it down to Levan on New Year's Eve, though- and someone even documented the drive with pictures! And we made it to the Clark's for the annual New Year's party. We have an awesome ward!
All in all, I think I'm ready for this vacation to be over! I am grateful, though. All the possibilities that were going through my head as we were waiting to get Josh to the doctor were scary, and hopefully he won't have anything serious to deal with. We have (mostly) happy and healthy kids now, Tim has an awesome job, we have a wonderful ward, and of course we have the gospel. Life is wonderful... now if I can just have a few hours to get the house clean again!
