WE NEED YOU!!!

Please help the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation win $1 million dollars to go towards finding a cure for SMA!

SMA is the #1 genetic killer of children under 2. Isabel would have been one of the many babies lost to SMA with out lots of medical intervention. But her fight is still not over. She fights for her life everyday. She spends weeks in the hospital every year, goes to doctors appointments and therapy visits weekly, spends hours a day doing breathing treatments and physical therapy to try to keep her deterioriating body as healthy as possible.

THERE IS NO CURE FOR SMA.....YET! But we know it is possible and researchers are so close. $1 million dollars could be the difference in curing SMA, in saving Isabel's life, in saving her best friend Alexa's life, in saving her twin friends, Kyle and Lauren's lives, and in saving the lives of so many other children living with SMA. All you have to do to help is log on to facebook and vote for the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation to win $1million dollars from the Chase Community Giving campaign. Please do it today, and ask your friends and family to do the same. We NEED to win this! Isabel NEEDS to win this!

Vote here http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/710566

Voting ends January 22nd, please vote now!

A day in the life of an almost 2 year old.....

make a mess in your bedroom......

make a mess in the computer room......

make a mess in the living room.....

wait for mommy to clean it up.....

then start all over again!

Glasses

Thanks to her daddy and genetics, Isabel has to wear glasses now! But she sure looks cute :)

Christmas

Cori trying out her new bike! She looks like she's riding super fast ;)
Isabel's present from Santa....a dancing Dora! She loved opening all of her presents!

Francisco had fun too :)

Almost all of Cori's presents had something to do with doggies or kitties. This kitty moves and meows when you pet it. Cori must of thought is really was a real cat because all day long she was trying to feed it!

Presents from Santa.

We had a fun and exciting Christmas this year with my family in San Diego. Our power went out at 8am and didn't come back on until 7pm! Thanks to our neighbors we were able to plug in Izzy's equipment with an extension cord. We ended up going out to dinner since we couldn't cook anything at home. Yesterday we (meaning Niki) made our Christmas dinner, a little late but it was delicious. Both girls have been sick with a cold and have been grouchy/tired. So it wasn't a perfect Christmas, but we still enjoyed spending time together!

The Real Santa

We took the girls to see Santa before Christmas. Isabel loved him but Cori wasn't having it so I decided not to torture her and I let her sit on my lap instead of Santa's :)

So far behind!

Pictures with grandma!

I have a lot of catching up to do! But first, something from last weekend. Francisco and I took Isabel on a little date to the MDA Holiday Party. We left Cori at home with Grandma so we could relax a little and actually enjoy the party. She is just too crazy lately ("spirited" is what the parenting books call her!).


Isabel loved her present from the staff at the MDA. We are excited to get more involved with the MDA here in San Diego, the staff are all super nice and we met a couple of nice families also.

We got to watch some professional wheelchair dancers and they taught us a few moves. Isabel got the two cutest dance partners there, her dad and the guy in the hat. Sorry no pictures of his face, but he was pretty cute. What a lucky girl! And what lucky guys!

Taking a little nap at the party....really little....like 3 minutes.

She also loved the bubble machine, her feet were covered in bubbles after a few seconds!

And meeting Santas helper....he's way too skinny to be the real Santa!

I think Isabel loved having her mom and dad all to herself for a little while and we loved being with her too!

Thankful

I haven't posted anything in a while, mainly because Isabel has been sick. A few weeks ago she had a couple of infections in her trach/lung area so she needed some antibiotics. She was feeling better, then two thursdays ago she started looking like she wasn't feeling good again. She started running a temp on friday morning and by friday evening she was looking really bad, just burning up and her heart rate was super high (in the 220's) so we packed her up and took her to the e.r. They got her back to evaluate her with in a few minutes and as soon as the nurse saw how high her heart rate was they took her straight back to a room and within mintues she had multiple doctors and nurses working on her. You know it's pretty bad when you see 1 doctor right away in the e.r. let alone 3 or 4 doctors. After about 30 minutes she was taken up to the icu and Francisco and I had to leave her so they could place a central line and an arterial line, which are sterile procedures since both go in the big veins/arteries that go straight to the heart. She was started on a bunch of antibiotics and was severely dehydrated so they started pumping fluids into her pretty quick. Turns out she was in septic shock from a blood infection. We had no idea she was that sick going in so we were definitely scared. Isabel has been in the hospital a few times, but I think this was the worst in terms of how sick she was. Luckily the antibiotics kicked in pretty quickly and she was feeling better within a couple of days. She was in the icu for 6 days and in the respiratory care unit for 5 days and now she is home and feeling great! We never figured out exactly how she got the infection in her blood, the theory is that the antibiotics she had been on before killed all the good bacteria in her stomach and intestines, then she caught a stomach flu which turned into a super infection since there was no good bacteria to stop it and it somehow spread into her blood.

This thanksgiving we are definitely thankful for the amazing medical care and technology available to us.....and health insurance! You do not want to know how much a week in the icu costs! We are thankful for the doctors and nurses who took care of our Izzy and helped her get better. We are so thankful Isabel is such a tough girl and was able to hang in there and come back home with us. We are thankful for a loving Heavenly Father who has blessed us with so many things, the best of which are our two daughters, Isabel and Coralie.

Happy Thanksgiving!