Our Christmas vacation started out with Claire getting her cast off the day before we left. She did so great and hardly cried. She was a little scared of the saw they used. They took new x-rays and the doctor said that even though it was only about 80% healed he was fine with leaving the cast off. She favored it a bit for the first few days, but had soon forgotten completely that she had even broken it. We finally wrote a few messages to her on her cast the night before it came off so I had to get a few pictures. We got to keep the cast too. Olivia didn't want her to get it off since she said it was so cute on her. I agreed but was so glad that the girls could get back in the tub again.
On Friday we packed up a bunch of stuff and headed to Kalispell, MT to spend a week with my parents for Christmas. We got a late start due to Hans having a lot to do at work and all the prep I needed to do so we only made it to Spokane that night since Claire was super tired and has trouble sleeping in the car. So we finished the trip the next day and had great roads which was really nice. There was a big surprise waiting for us at my parents house when we arrived Saturday early afternoon. My parents have had a bathroom that had a leak in the tub and wall years ago and had not had the money to get it fixed so when we were there we had no tub for the girls just a stand up shower. They were able to remodel the bathroom this year though and kept it a secret from us (they started in Sept.). I was shocked when I turned around and saw the beautiful new bathroom and big soaker tub. I think I was in shock for the first few days. It was really nice to have this new space for us and the girls loved playing in there. I could hardly get Olivia out.
On our trip we did lots of fun stuff, but still seemed to not have as much time as I would have liked to do other things. We had fun playing rock band with Josh and his girlfriend Carrie. We did some baking ( Olivia loved helping Grandma with cookies). Hans and I did way too much shopping as I had left a lot of our shopping to be done there (no sales tax), but won't be doing that again as it just did not leave as much time for other things. I really want to be done with shopping before the beginning of Dec. in years to come so that we can really focus on the true reason for the season and have more family time. We didn't get any time to play in the snow as it was really warm when we there and was raining instead of snowing. We did get a few chances to hang out with Carrie and her boys and Olivia got to go to her first movie(The Princess and the Frog) in the theater with Grandma Janice, but she got scared about an hour in and they left early.
On Sunday my dad sang in the choir performance of "The Perfect Tree" during the church service and it was really nice. I got one picture of Claire watching and one of them singing. I wished I would have gotten a picture of the girls in their dresses together, but didn't so I will share more of their professional Christmas pictures later.
The choir they did a great job.
That night we went to a performance of Scrooge at the Christian Center. It was packed, but we found a few seats and really enjoyed the performance they did a wonderful job.
On Tuesday we had a "p" themed party at Grandma Betty's house with the great grandkids. We had a pig game, pizza, pickles, pomegranite juice, and pumpkin pie. It was fun to have the kids play together and even though the twins didn't get a nap they did great.
That night as rock band was going on the girls woke up and Olivia had a really bad fever and was crying and couldn't get back to sleep. I was immediately worried as I knew a fever the same night she had been bitten was too much of a coincidence and I just had a feeling that something wasn't right. We decided to wait out the night and see how she was doing in the morning. Christmas morning was not the joyful fun morning that I had pictured with the girls full of glee opening their presents. Instead Olivia woke still with a fever and threw up first thing. She had no appetite and was not herself at all. I began researching on web MD and became very concerned that she had an infection. We had breakfast though and did presents. Claire was really cute this year and loved ripping open the presents. She would cutely exclaim, "Wow!!" with each opening, but soon tired of opening gifts especially after she opened her new baby doll. I am sad that I did not get more pictures of Olivia and that she did not enjoy Christmas morning at all she sat on Hans' lap and quietly opened presents ( I think Hans helped her with most of them) which was a huge sign that she was not herself since she usually loves opening all her gifts and helping everyone else as well.
Claire and her stocking.
Olivia and Hans opening their stockings.
Claire and her baby doll.
You can see in this picture how red Olivia's cheek is and that she is just not herself.
After the gift opening Hans and I decided we better take Olivia in as I was still very concerned that something was wrong and that she needed medical attention. She did not want to go to the doctor because she already dislikes them and knows they give shots to her, but we all headed to the ER around noon. Sure enough my suspicion was confirmed when the doctor said she definitely had an infection. They cleaned up the wound and started squeezing pus out (sorry to be so blunt with what happened but I want to record what happened). It was absolutely awful as she was in so much pain (another sign of infection very tender to the touch). She had to get two shots of antibiotic in her legs and then took more antibiotic orally. They wanted to keep her overnight, but I talked him into letting us go home to try and enjoy our last day in Kalispell before we headed home to prepare for Japan. The rest of the day we nursed Olivia and her face, had dinner again at Grandma Betty's house, and then when we got home since her eye was starting to swell up and they had warned that if the redness expanded her infection might be spreading we decided to head back to the ER to make sure the infection was not spreading. Also she had thrown up shortly after taking her medication. It wasn't, she just got a black eye from all the trauma to her face. We got a new set of instructions and an ointment to put on it and sent home.
Saturday we stuck with our plan and packed up to head back home leaving our kitty Ellie behind to stay with Grandma and Grandpa while we were gone in Japan. It was really hard for us to say goodbye and we miss her still. Olivia will randomly start crying and say that she misses Ellie. We are just praying that nothing happens to her while we are gone and we will be reunited when we return from Japan. The trip was uneventful but long as usual. Sunday began preparations for Japan with unpacking, laundry, and our long to do list of things to get ready in 5 short days. On Monday we took Olivia to her doctor and unfortunately the advice we had gotten from the second ER doctor was not good; he had told us not to push on her face to get the pus out and the ointment had kind of clogged up the wound which wasn't allowing the pus to flow out. So that day was a horrible experience for Olivia and Hans ( I stayed home to get Claire a nap) who had a hard time watching his baby in such pain. They had to go in there and aggressively try to clean out the built up pus that was making her feel so sick. She is such a trooper though and did really good despite the intense pain. The doctor said if it had to be done again she would have to have surgery as it was too much pain for her. They also switched her antibiotic which has been much better for her. The first antibiotic made her feel so sick that we were doing suppositories to try and help her keep it down and she fought us with each dose as she knew how sick it made her feel. So even though her Monday visit was rough it was the turning point in her infection and she came home with much better spirits and was starting to get back to her old self and enjoying all her new toys from Christmas.
This picture was from Sunday before she went to the doctor on Monday.
In this picture you can see her bruised eye and how swollen the side of her face was.
This picture was taken on New Year's Eve. We took Olivia back to the doctor that morning to see how things were going. It was looking markedly improved, but she had gotten a slight fever that night which was worrying me and her doctor. The fever is sign of fighting off infection the problem was we didn't know if she was fighting off the infection which was still in her cheek or if the fever was from the virus of a cold she was picking up. We were scheduled to leave the next day for Japan and we were worried that if the infection was still there it might flare up and she might need surgery something we didn't want to deal with while in Japan. We had a tough decision of whether or not to postpone our trip that we were almost completely packed for and prepared for. We went back and forth all day and finally decided to go ahead with our plans to head over to Kevin and Anna's for the evening before our flight the next day. I was able to put some salve on the wound once we got there and that softened the healing scab up enough that it was once again flowing and her fever broke so we were glad to know what the fever was from and that she was once again getting back to herself. We decided to continue with our plans to head to Japan.
This ordeal has been a trying one for Hans and I. There were a lot of tears shed, guilt for not doing the right thing in the first place, and seeing your baby in such pain is really hard. Plus we had to inflict more pain on her by pressing on it to help it get better. We learned a lot and I know in the future if we have to face something like this we will do better at trying to prevent an infection from happening as they are really scary and you can get complications from them very fast. We also learned that even though dogs and cats are not out to get your kids that if the kids do something to scare them then they can bite so we need to do a better job of teaching our children what not to do around animals so as to prevent this in the future.
Riley man is getting so big ( I missed the big smile right before this).
Olivia loved racing Riley's Thomas the Train engines.
Claire the phone talker already
Getting in some last minute reading with Auntie Anna. We miss you guys already!
