A whirlwind of a vacation and then a whirlwind of sickness all when Phoenix turns 18 months!

A couple of weeks ago on Sunday the 12th of July we had a neighborhood picnic. It was a great success. We had over half of the neighborhood in our park grilling food and spending time together. The only picture I managed to capture was of Phoenix chilling with Nishka. Phoenix was in love with their chairs and spent most of the time climbing up and down the chairs. 

Axel attended Vacation Bible School for the first time, at Westgate Church,  now that he is old enough. He had the most amazing time. We picked him up an hour early to head to the airport on Thursday the 17th. He was bummed to miss Friday, but he was also excited to see his old buddy Mason. We were headed to Camas, Washington to visit an old coworker and friend of mine/ours (Kaia and Andrew) and Axel's old daycare mates (Mason and Carter). Axel is wearing his VBS t-shirt below that says living inside out, looking at the plane that just crashed on television. Hence, his mouth opened.

 On Friday we enjoyed some time at a local park and then a lovely hike through their local woods.

 Mason's little brother, Carter, who isn't so little, is running with Axel in the picture below.

 The views were breath taking.

 Here are the three boys at our turn around spot. As you can see Carter and Mason are almost the same size even though they are two years apart.

 On Friday afternoon we hung out in their backyard and Andrew grilled up the tastiest steak Keith and I have had in quite awhile.

 On Saturday we headed to Bonneville Dam. On our way we stopped at the look out for Beacon Rock. You can hardly see it in the distance on the left hand side of the picture, but once we arrived at Bonneville it looked much bigger than the image below. The Columbia River was amazingly beautiful no matter where we saw it from.

 A family picture of the backdrop outside of Bonneville Dam.

 The Generators!

 The kids playing with the generator displays.

 The Eight of us on our own personal tour. I was the lucky one who got to wear the ranger's hat, although it looks funny sitting on top of my sunglasses :)

 We got to go underneath and look at the fish going through the fish ladder. The lamprey like to stick to the window. They were a little interesting looking to me.

 We got to see plenty of other fish right their way up the fish ladder, although you can't see them as clearly. Currently the salmon are making their way to the other side of the dam.

After the visit to the dam we enjoyed a picnic and hike along the Columbia River. 

 It was a beautiful day.

 We even got to see a giant slug!

 Here is a great picture that Keith got of Phoenix on our way home. Here first modeling wind pose :)

 After nap time we enjoyed making very delicious home made ice cream together and another tasty meal grilled by chef Andrew.

We left early on Sunday to get home and get ready for the next week. 

Axel had another week of swim lessons planned. Unfortunately, on Monday daddy came down with a bad cold and stayed home from work. I felt the onsets of it but was pushing through my short work week until I got a phone call from daycare on Wednesday morning at 9:30am. Axel had also come down with the virus and had a fever. I was actually really glad to go and pick him up because I also felt quite feverish myself. Axel took a monster nap of 3.5 hours once we got home and I was in and out of sleep for nearly 3 hours myself. After Axel got up to eat a little food he went back to bed for a couple of hours. I had to carry him to and from the car in order to pick Phoenix up from daycare. This was only the second time I remember him being as sick.

 Luckily, Axel was feeling better on Thursday, but was still running a mild fever. We skipped swim lessons for the second day in a row and headed to the library to get more Magic Tree House books and then to Phoenix's 18 month check up. I told our Pediatrician that the entire house was sick and that Phoenix would likely be next, but we both decided she should get her immunizations anyways. Within 2 hours she had a fever. I can't remember the last time I had the privilege of holding Phoenix so much. It wasn't until Saturday morning that her fever broke.

Unfortunately, when I went to change her morning diaper I noticed that she had a big pocket of fluid/mass under her knee. It looked infected, whatever it was. I immediately called the advice nurse and we received the bad news at the doctor's office, later that morning, that most likely it was a staph infection or worse yet MRSA. It really makes me mad because she had fallen while we were hiking and the little scrap seemed to heal quite quickly. I had no warning signs what so ever that the little scrap was going to get infected. Now she is on this super strong antibiotic to kill whatever kind of infection it is. How has our environment gotten so bad that the doctors won't even culture it and just give the strong medication anyways? The doctor said, "most staph infections are resistant anyways, so even if it is Staph and not MRSA, you will still need Clindamycin." Good thing is her gross little mass is almost gone after a few doses. I hope that she doesn't have to go on this for a long time or ever again!

In other news her stats at her 18 month check up are 20 lb 15 oz (although with clothes and shoes on she only weighed 20 lbs 9 oz on Saturday after being sick for a couple of days) which is the 28th percentile. Her height was 32 3/4 inches, which is the 80the percentile! Her head circumference was still in the 20th percentile at 17 3/4 inches. She is growing really well!

I was able to capture this cute picture on Monday the 21st (Phoenix, 18 months) of the kids eating apples before dinner. So cute!

I had forgot to mention in the last blog that Axel had started taking showers. He is really proud of himself for being such a big boy. Well, Phoenix felt quite left out and decided that she wanted to take showers with Axel as well. Lets just say after a few times Phoenix decided it wasn't for her, but Axel still really enjoys them. Now bath time gets a little tricky when they don't want to get clean together, but I understand that Axel will be showering independently in the very near future!

We are all on the road to recovery and hope to be 100% healthy by the end of the week. Axel has space camp and swim lessons all week so we are hoping that he wakes feeling good since he has such a fun filled week. Good thing he put himself to sleep at 6:30 pm tonight!