Last California post.......I promise!

This is the beach in Oceanside California, by the condo we stayed in. We had so much fun running from the waves!

Savannah loved playing in the sand, and attempting to eat it too as you can see!Another day at the beach. In fact, this is right before we went back to the condo, right before Savannah started seizing.
Here is my cute mom with Em and Brett at Sea World! I cannot thank my parents enough for coming and helping with the kids while I was in the hospital with Savannah.

This is the day we headed back up the coast and back to the airport. Savannah was released the night before from the hospital and I think this picture speaks volumes. Mike and I couldn't stop hugging and kissing our little girl. We are so grateful that she was able to mend and that we have had no scary incidences since. Here is Mike blowing raspberries on her neck, trying to get a laugh. She was still pretty weak at this time.

Beautiful Newport Beach. It was amazing, life is amazing!

A swing set on the beach, tons of sand and the ocean just right there! Emily just kept telling me how happy she was, life cannot get any better! I have to share one thing. As we were leaving our condo, Emily was sitting next to Savannah in the car. She hadn't been able to see much of her since Savannah had been released from the hospital. I looked back and saw that Em had her hand on Savannah's cheek. Emily was smiling at her and tears were running down her cheeks. When I asked her what was wrong she just said, "I am so happy to have my baby sister". Of course, both Mike and I had tears in our eyes.

I love my family and my sweet kids, what more can I say?

Happy Birthday Brett!

Brett turned 4 on May 16th! He is really into Spiderman this year so we had a family party with a spiderman cake! Brett thought it was so cool! Mike made a banana cake with cream cheese frosting and then decorated it. The Web is made out of black shoestring licorice! Brett loved the cake! He kept standing by it and doing his spiderman web slinging pose!On Saturday we had his friend Birthday party, of course it was Spiderman themed! Here he is showing he is 4 next to the giant 4 balloon Mike bought him!

Mike had fun decorating the back yard with streamers and balloons, the kids had fun helping. It turned out really awesome!

We played a lot of fun games, but one of the big hits was "stick your spider to the web" instead of pin the tail on the donkey. I made the spiders and Mike made the web!

We surprised Brett with a spiderman pinata! He was so excited and it was the hit of the party!


I don't know who had more fun, the boys hitting the pinata or Mike trying to keep it away from them!

It was such a fun party, Brett had a great time! Happy Birthday buddy! We love you so much and are so lucky to have you in our family, can't believe you are already 4!

California Trip - Disneyland!

We spent three days in Disneyland, it was so much fun! Here is a small sample of our 3 days, we took a ton of pics!Our first morning in Disneyland we went to a character breakfast. It was so much fun, we saw so many of our favorite characters! Emily obviously was the most excited to meet Minnie Mouse and Brett couldn't believe it when he saw Captain Hook! He loves Captain Hook (he was even him for Halloween) They did their "Arrrr Maties" and raised their "hooks" together!

We let the kids each pick out one toy on our last day. I laughed and took a pic when Mike held up Mickey!

California Adventure was a lot of fun too!

I especially loved the Bugs Life area, it was so creative! The kids really liked all of the rides, and Savannah was able to ride almost everything!

Here we are on the caterpillar ride. It went by giant watermelons and animal crackers, you could even smell each thing as you went by!

There have been a few changes since I went to Disneyland, the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House is now the Tarzan Tree House. It was neat to get a good view of Disneyland from the top.

Our families favorite ride of all was Pirates of the Caribbean! You can imagine with a little boy who loves pirates, he was pretty impressed! We went on it like 5 times during the 3 days we were there. Each time he would get off singing, "Yo ho, Yo ho, a pirates life for me!" It was fun to see Captain Jack Sparrow throughout the ride.


Emily and Brett right after the pirates ride!


Savannah's favorite ride was "It's a small world" She would just look around smile, laugh and clap. Seeing her like it so much we went on 5 times also. We loved going the end of April, we were able to just walk right on some rides, and the longest ride we had to wait for was about 30 minutes!

Here we are in Toon Town!

Everyone had to try to remove the sword from the stone.

Look at Em's face! She put some serious effort into trying to removing it!

Brett tried for awhile too, and in many different positions.

We loved Disneyland and just wish it didn't go by so quickly! It was so much fun to see the kids faces light up, to experience the magic! We each received a balloon at the character breakfast. I told the kids we should let the balloons go by the entrance of the Disney castle and make a wish. Brett did right away, but Emily thought about it and then let it go. Later on we were talking at the beach and she asked me if I wanted to know her wish, I told her I did. She told me that she wished she could fly........don't you just love Disneyland magic?

Make sure to turn on your sound to hear some classic Disney songs! *Mike had fun arranging them*

California Trip - Universal Studios

We went to California on the 20th of April. We experienced everything, Universal Studios, Disneyland, the San Diego Zoo, Sea World and Newport Beach! I am going to split our trip into a few posts since I took a bazillion pics! Here is the first day. We flew to California on Jet Blue. Mike and I both love surprises and decided to not tell the kids about the flight, trip, anything! It was so fun to wake up that morning and head toward the airport. They were so excited to fly they didn't even care to ask about where we were going!

They loved watching the planes and couldn't wait until it was our turn to get on the plane!

Emily was excited, but was more interested in watching the TV screen on the chair in front of her.

At take off Brett couldn't stop screaming "Wow,!" He thought it was the most amazing thing to fly!

Here we are at the cute teeny tiny Longbeach airport. It was so small it kinda felt like we were in a different county!
Family pic by the Universal Studios globe. The kids were so excited when we got off the plane and told them we were going where they made movies!

When we first walked into the park, there was a moving statue! Brett was so fascinated! I felt bad for the guy, it was a record heat day in LA 101 degrees! It would be hard to be dressed in black, pretending to be a statue all day.

We thought Brett would love to stand next to the shark, since he is always pretending to be one! But he was scared, maybe he thought the shark, like the man would suddenly come to life! Finally he did with Mike.

Savannah loved seeing Curious George, she kept giggling and smiling up at him.

Dora the Explorer!

Shrek with the fam.


Mike posing with Apollo 13 crew.

I just had to put this pic up, lol!

We had such a fun day at Universal Studios! The studio tour was the best ride. The kids kept thinking it was real. It was so fun to see Brett jump and scream when Jaws jumped up at him, to see the flood and in the end an earthquake! During the earthquake in the subway station Emily just kept holding on to Brett saying, "It is ok, hold on to me Brett, hold on!" We had to laugh, she is always trying to watch out for him. Awesome day, it was just crazy to leave 50 degrees in Utah and come to a heat wave in California!

Thank You

First of all, Mike and I want to say "Thank you" to all of you who have supported us through this very difficult time. Words cannot express our gratitude. When we got home late last night Mike and I read your words on the last few posts with tears in our eyes. Thank you for your words, your encouragement and especially your prayers. We believe that Savannah was so blessed, as were we by the many prayers in our behalf. Thank you. And thanks to my sister Jenny for just doing the blog and posts without even asking. It was nice to have all of your encouragement.

On Sunday around 3:15 pm Savannah had her first seizure. She had just got up from her nap and was her usual self. I noticed that she felt a little warm, nothing too serious but I knew even without checking a temp that she had a slight fever. She was playing and then came to me and laid her head on my chest and started making strange swallowing noises. I looked at her and knew she was having a seizure. I called for Mike. When she finished I gave her Motrin figuring it was a febrile seizure and it would pass. She didn't look at me, she didn't cry and was very flaccid and weak. I was hoping she was just post ictal when she started to seize again. We called 911 and the paramedics arrived. Her sats were initially in the high 70's, but jumped quickly to 92. They put her on blow by o2 and transfered her to the ambulance where she continued to seize. They had a hard time getting an IV line in (everyone did, even the special IV team at Children's). When we got to the ER about 10 minutes later everyone started working on her immediatly to stop the seizures. The gave her 2 mg Ativan and then had to follow it up twice with .5mg more each time just to get them to stop. After they stopped she was given Dilantin (anti seizure med) loading dose. She had her eyes open the whole time, they were just looking up and to the right. When they noticed that her left pupil was larger than the right I just started to cry. You would think a little bit of medical knowledge would help in these kind of situations, but in reality it just made it so much worse. I have seen people with hypoxic brain injuries, people who have serious long term effects from incidents just like this. I was just so scared, and felt like I would never see my little girl again. My mom talked to me at this time, and after we hung up she and my Dad decided to get in the car and drive down. They will never know the amount of relief I felt when I heard they were coming. I love them so much and will be eternally gratful that they did this for us, without me even having to ask. Thank you so much!

A CAT scan was done, without contrast so is wasn't something that could show brain function but they were able to see that there was no mass (huge relief). Then they decided to ship her to Rady Childrens Hospital in San Diego. Now that her seizures were controlled they felt she was stable enough to move. Her sats were stable but they considered intubating her for the transport. I am grateful they did not have to, I am also grateful that they felt she could go 20 minutes by ambulance instead of by life flight. Rady Childrens Hospital is apparantly one of the top hospitals in the US and they sent a transport team. Resp. Therapist and a life flight nurse for the transfer. When we arrived at their step down ICU she had 2 more seizures and they gave her another 1mg of Ativan. They then did a lumbar puncture. They wouldn't let me stay in the room, even though I begged. Afterward the nurse told me that even though Savannah wasn't responding to anything at all she did cry a little and try to squirm away during the proceedure. Even though I don't want her to hurt, this was really good news that she was responding to painful stimuli. It was a tough night to say the least. Mike took the kids back to the condo and so I was alone with my thoughts and fears. Savannah had one more seizure, the last one at 11:30 that night. The seizures escalated with each one. The last involved her whole body. My parents arrived to the condo at 5am the next day, slept just a couple of hours and then sent Mike to be with me while they watched the kids. Because of the swine flu, the hospital was on lock down. No one except parents could visit.

The next day she had an EEG in the morning which was normal and an MRI that afternoon which was normal. I was so relieved to hear that, and kept hoping she would start to wake up. That evening she started to open her eyes, and started to cry. What a beautiful noise! She still wouldn't look at us, but wanted me to hold her. That night she had 2 really bad fits (lasting about 4 hours total) that she was totally inconsolable. She would writhe around on the bed, hit me, scratch and scream if I tried to hold her. I was worried it was the medication Keppra that she was on but the neurologist felt she was just coming back after the seizures. The neurologist said that it would probably take at least a week for her to get totally back to herself, and that left untreated this could have caused death and it was so important that she stay on these meds for 6-12 months.

They never could figure out what caused this, although they all agree that Savannah probably has a seizure disorder. They won't clasify it as epilepsy yet, but we are all watching her closely. What occured is called Status elipticus. Meaning she had a seizure that lasted more than 30 minutes. On Tuesday evening she was discharged, they really wanted us to make it home on our flight and follow up with neurology here. Right before discharge she started holding up her head on her own, started to look and focus on me. Yesterday at this time she started to walk a little bit. Right now she can walk but she is still pretty unsteady. Personality wise, she is more irritable, and doesn't seem like herself but I keep seeing little glimpses of her every once in awhile. When I met with the Neurologist here up at Primary's today he assured me that although she is taking longer than usual to get back to baseline, he was optomistic that she would totally return in about a week. We hope and pray that he is right. I am so grateful for all of you, sorry for the rambling post, I just wanted all of you to know what happened and where we are now. Thank you, we love you all! Our prayers were answered and I thank my Father in Heaven for being mindful of our little family.

Savannah is going home!!!

REVISED: I just talked to Jody after I posted this, so I'm going to revise it a bit. The news is a lot better now....
Savannah is being discharged from the hospital tonight! Jody and Mike will be able to fly home tomorrow as planned. They still don't know what exactly is going on with Savannah, but she has been seizure free and is starting to crawl around on the floor. So that is wonderful news to us and we think she will be back to her normal self in no time! Savannah has doctors appointments set and a visit to primary's on thursday to try to find out what is going on. Thank you to everyone for being so supportive and for all the thoughts and prayers, they have totally helped!!!

update on Savannah....

It's Jenny again. First off, Jody and Mike want to thank you all so much for all your thoughts and prayers. I wanted to let you all know that your prayers are working! I believe prayer is a powerful thing and that Heavenly Father is hearing all your prayers and is watching over little Savannah.

Savannah has been seizure free since late last night and has started coming out of her coma. She can look around, drink juice and eat jello and say "mama". It's just so amazing to me that they have such great friends and family offering such wonderful support and love.

Our brother in law Aaron was able to contact Jody and Mike's bishop and he contacted a bishop in La Hoya , CA. to come help give Savannah a blessing. Its amazing how the church works and is so fast to help out fellow members. I teased to my husband, "the church is just as fast in communication as the internet" (which we have gotten amazing responses of prayers and thoughts from blogs, emails and facebook) It's so different from utah, where in our hospitals all they have to do is page overhead, "can we have 2 elders come to room......" and immediately 5 or 6 are up there. but it is also so wonderful that even in another state the church is just as willing to help out by having the bishop of a close by ward come to help.

The EEG and MRI came back with normal results showing that right now she isn't having other seizures and she has no tumors or masses. Her brain activity is all normal, so as you can imagine that is a huge relief to us all. The neurologist says he is cautiously optimistic. He wants to keep her until at least tuesday afternoon to make sure she doesn't have any more seizures. And wants her to get back to her baseline of walking and talking as well. Right now she can move a little but still can't hold her head up, which is mainly due to all the medications they have given to her. They still don't know exactly what is happening with her so they will be sending her home on anti seizure meds and have sent all the results to primary childrens hospital where she will be evaluated when they return back to utah. Jody says the hospital and doctors have been wonderful and they are thankful for all their work and thankful for all your prayers. Keep them coming as Savannah is still not out of the woods.

I will continue to update when I know more.