St. Patrick's Day and Spring Break guests

Over Spring Break we had some of Tom's family drive down from Minnesota. I didn't bring my camera anywhere :( I was so bad! But I did have it out when we had everyone over for dinner. We got out the bounce house for all the kids to play in.
Amelia had a great time in the bounce house!

Ben - silly as ever!

Josh swinging on the swing set.

Cousin Jim from Minnesota.

Jim's brother, John.

Hanging in the backyard - Tom, John, Sarah, Nick, and Linda.

Maria brought over baby Campbell! It was so fun seeing him!

We spent a lot of the evening playing the Just Dance on the Wii - we had a lot of fun! Even people without the remote were dancing around.

Tom was more of a spectator, not a participant this time.

The kids also went to a birthday party for their friend, Ashlynn, at a bounce house place.

We hadn't been to one in a while and the kids were loving it!

Look at all the kids! It was a big party!

Elizabeth and Ben with the birthday girl, Ashlynn.

We also had St. Patrick's Day when our company was here. We had everyone for breakfast that morning. The leprechaun left us some rainbow cupcakes!

He also mysteriously changed the milk (and the toilet water) green!

Both of the kids remembered this from last year, they got a big kick out of it.

We also had a scavenger hunt, the leprechaun left us some clues that Elizabeth read. We waited for Zach and Amelia to wake up and do the hunt with us, they weren't too interested in it though! :)

We found one on the fridge, one in the family room, and whoo hoo, we found the cupcake treat!

Cupcakes for breakfast? Only on St. Patties Day!!

He might not have enjoyed the hunt, but he loved the cupcakes!

The inside of the cupcake, we loved the rainbow inside.

The grandkids all came over for breakfast in their cute St. Patties outfits.

We even got baby Campbell in the picture!

Amelia refused to look at the camera!

We finally got her looking - but then her brother wasn't! I guess we can't win with 7 little ones!

We also had a 4 leaf clover hunt in the house - the kids who found a 4 leaf clover got a chocolate coin. We had a great visit with our company and we're so glad they came!

Campbell is born!

Our niece, Maria, had her first baby last week. His name is Campbell Kelly (Kelly after Maria's father) - and he is so adorable! We went up to the hospital to meet the precious boy.

There he is!! We are so happy for them!

Last Friday I had our neighborhood playgroup over for a crafting session with the moms. Let's just say after the chaos of trying to craft with the kids, we decided our next craft night will be in the evening! All the surfaces in my kitchen were completely full with craft stuff so the kids had to eat on the floor!

Part of the mess going on while we were busy crafting.

That evening I had a crafting night with friends, which is when I actually got something done - I couldn't do anything while trying to referee all the kiddos! It was a fun time, though!

Elizabeth is Cured!!

I know most of you know that Elizabeth has (had!!) a heart condition called SVT. Basically she had an extra electrical connection in her heart that would sometimes cause her heart to beat twice as fast as her normal heart beat. We discovered this when she was hospitalized at the age of 2 1/2 with pneumonia. The doctors think the stress of the illness on her body caused her SVT to show up when it did - otherwise it probably would have waited until she was older. Last weekend Elizabeth went to the hospital for a scheduled heart surgery to "kill" the extra connection in her heart. We didn't tell her the surgery was happening until the beginning of the week. (I would have loved to not tell her until the day of but the doctors wanted her to be off of her medicine for the week since they needed her heart to go into SVT during the procedure). She handled the news much better than I thought she would - mainly due to the present you will see in the next picture!
We totally bribed her by giving her a Nintendo DS video game. I am not a huge fan of video games because my kids love TV and our Wii way too much, so I really didn't want another thing to fight about! :) But, she loves to play her cousin's DS and when we realized we would be doing the surgery we decided the video game would be a good thing for her to sit still and play.

She sure loves her daddy!

They had her go change into her gown - at this point I think it was sinking in what was going to happen and she got a little nervous.

She brought her bitty baby to go with her.

Now they had given her "giggle juice". I forget the actual name of the medicine but it was supposed to calm her down. She had a few cases of the giggles with it, it was pretty funny!

The nurses were so great with her, bitty got all the same treatments as Elizabeth.

Even down to the name tag on her leg.

At this point she started to be really goofy, thank goodness the medicine was kicking in. I was really dreading the part where they take Elizabeth away totally awake to go into surgery. I thought she would totally lose it (or I would!). Luckily the medicine did it's job and she went away happy.

The nurse told her to give us a princess wave goodbye.

So, for the next 4 hours Elizabeth was in surgery while we waited in a waiting room to hear updates. Both Grandmas came and waited with us. The surgery was actually 3 catheters that went into Elizabeth's legs and neck and lead to her heart. They basically entered the heart, found the extra connection, and using heat killed the extra connection (that is the way simplified version). Luckily the connection was in an easily accessible spot in her heart so her Dr. was able to find it and get rid of it relatively easily. There is always a chance of it coming back, but it's a tiny chance since they were able to get to it so easily. So thank goodness it's over!!

She was pretty sleepy and pale when it was all over.

Grandma B got a hospital gown for Elizabeth's other bitty baby, which Elizabeth loved.

She had to stay overnight for texts to make sure her heart healed properly and there were no leaky valves or anything after the procedure.

This was about 5 hours after the procedure. They had her lay very still and flat for the first 4 hours to control the bleeding from the entry sites. They don't do any stitches, just pressure bandages. Before we went home they took the bandages off and just sent her home with a bandaid over each spot! It's amazing that she walked out of the hospital pretty much perfectly fine the next day. She had to take it easy for the rest of the week but was even able to go to school on Monday, the 3rd day after the procedure.

Elizabeth was super spoiled during the whole thing with lots of friends and family giving her gifts and balloons so in general I think she thought it was a good experience. And we are all so happy and thankful that she is totally done taking her medicine and that we don't have to worry about that fast heartbeat again!