Friday, September 26, 2008

Ash's first gymnastics meet

We are very excited for this weekend. Ashley has her very first gymnastics meet in St. Paul. She is nervous and excited all at the same time. She has been working extremly hard and can't wait to put her work to the test. We don't know what to expect being we have never been to a meet before. Tonight she will get her team leo, back and warm up suit. It will be really fun.

Ethan is working hard in swimming and getting ready for his first meet next month. He loves it so much and gets so excited when ever he is around water. He will also be getting a team suit, swim cap and warm up outfit. How cute will that be?!

Jaden is doing well and we are anxious to start his "theraputic Horsebackriding." He will do that one time a week and we will start that next month sometime. It will be in Monticello in a heated facility. That will interesting to see.

I am off now to make lunch. Probably good old mac n cheese. tata...

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

A new member to the family

So Jose, Sal's dad, had found a Salamander at the shop under his tool box. Of course being that Ethan loves little creatures, Jose gave it to Ethan. We used one of Ethan's bug habitats to keep it in to see what would happen. Ethan found bugs & slugs for it daily in the back yard. So we went to the pet store to see about a cage for it and they highly recommended not keeping the one from the wild and to get one where we know the history. So after much thought, we agreed that we did not want to keep the one from the wild since we knew nothing about it.

Ethan got to pick a new little critter to buy and he picked a Crested Gecko. It is pretty cute and already gets a large amount of attention. Sal is a little scared of it still and I won't touch it yet. But it has been fun to have and learn about Gecko's.

Jaden says he wants to touch it but when we say fine and open the cage top he says no. It is pretty cute. Ashley will hold it today after school.

We are all pretty much better now just some of us have a little cough still. We got through this one ok.

Talk to you all later...

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

First round of sickness

So our family has officially started off the season of sickness. Jaden and Sal both started feeling sick last Friday, then Ash and I started on Monday then Ethan yesterday. Luckily it is only yucky cold stuff.

We have been taking huge amounts of vitamins and Ninja Red, this wonderful supplement we get from my mom. We have all kicked around the yuck and have not gone full blown with it and hopefully won't. I think with all of the supplements and vitamins, it has helped us all kick it away. I hope this is not a sign for a long sick filled winter.

Ethan has hip hop and gymnastics shortly but I thought I would swing in and say hi.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Canning

First off, thank you to all of you who have been asking and praying for us about our insurance. We have been overwhelmed with care and concern and that has felt so good to know people care so much.

We have been canning at our house the past few weeks. Our garden has been very good this year. Ethan is my garden lover and helps all of the time. Jaden helps by stepping on everything in the garden and Ashley does help also but mostly just eats the tomatos before they make it to the house. We have already canned a lot of pickles, salsa, spagetti sauce and today I am going to do a Garden Tomato Relish. We had tried Ketchup and Chutneys last year. I thought I would try a few things new this year.

Jaden will be starting up all of his therapies at the clinic again as soon as we all figure out the schedule availability. I am anxious for that all to start up so he can get back to doing better at eating. We also are looking into Theraputic Horsebackriding. It sounds like a perfect fit for Jaden and his needs. I will let you know what happens with that.

Better go and start canning...

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Insurance

The world of health insurance is so horrible. We have been having issues with insurance since the end of June. Since we don't have an "employer" who offers insurance, it makes it difficult to get insurance. We were getting insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield through MN Care. You can get this if no one offers you insurance through work. We had a premium like everyone else. Then our premium jumped to an amount that was impossible to pay. Then we all lost coverage to include Jaden.

Since July 31 Jaden has had no coverage and we have been paying for his medication on our own. It has been a huge mess. Well after talking with many people for many hours and getting a ton of paper work together, we finally as of this morning have got Jaden to be certified disabled. This means he can get Tefra (a way for disabled to people to not be denied insurance due to their disability)no matter what. Thank the Lord.

Now we will have to get reimbursed for the hundreds of dollars we have spent on his medications and PCA's that have still been coming. A lady named Kathy at the county went over and above to help us out with this process. She asked the review board of Dr.s to rush on the decision. We had to collect his medical records from everywhere for the last year. Kathy faxed over 170 pages of records in just from the past year. The past year has been slow as far as medical goes for Jaden. I can't imagine what his first year how many pages there would be. I am so thankful that he will finally be covered again. It will be such a relief to not have to worry about if we have enough money for his next medication that runs out. We all know how expensive medication is.

Anyway, a friend of mine, Kristin, told me about this insurance group that looks to be a good alternative for those who don't have insurance or who can't get it. It is http://www.samaritanministries.org/index.html. It is a Christian organization and it looks to be pretty cool. I thought I would pass it along to all of you so if you or anyone you know are looking for insurance options you could check here.

Now we can breath knowing that Jaden is covered.

Thank you to those who I know have been praying for us specifically on the insurance issues.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Happy School year 2008

I know it has been forever. Of course when you have overloaded with something it becomes hard to get yourself to go back. That would be the computer. I have been trying to avoid the computer for way to long. That includes emails as well as the blog. I am going to try and get back into the grove of life and technology.

We had a wonderful summer and traveled ALOT. We went camping, on long vacations and visiting family this summer. We are planning on keeping up the pace of being out of town as long as our mini home wants to keep moving. Ashley is competing in gymnastics this year so she has 1 competition a month Sept. through Dec. Ethan is joining the swim team this year and will have at least 1 meet a month from Oct. thru Apr. We will be busy which is what we love.

The kids started school last week and loved it. Ethan had a hard time adjusting and said "Mrs. Avery is the toughest teacher in the whole school but I like her." It was so cute. Ashley has Mrs. Oettel and loves her as well.

Jaden is doing very well. He was "home bound" last season which means we were not to take him around other children or large groups of people. We got the all clear in late April. At that time we took him out a lot and he was getting sick every single weekend. He even ended up in short stay for a day to get rehydrated. We have been giving him natural supplements to help make his immune system stronger. We were hoping that we would not have to endure another long season of no outside world but his Dr. and Cardiologist thinks it is critical to keep him healing and strong so they want him in again. They are hoping he will have his next surgery in the spring. He only weighs 25 pounds right now. We have 5 more to go for his surgery. Every time he gets sick he loses 1-3 pounds. So clearly that is why he needs to stay healthy. This is also another reason we are glad to be busy traveling because then we can all go have fun together but also stay away from large groups of people and kids. We do our own little family church service at home and sing praise and read the bible. For now that is "our" church. We could take turns taking the kids but that gets very stressful and we have decided to stay as a family and worship God together. This is better for us then to have one of us lonely and at home with Jaden while the rest is out at church. This works best for our family and will have to do until Jaden is past the hard stage of his life.

The one positive with being home bound is Jaden and the rest of our family only got sick ONE time each last season. That is amazing. It was so wonderful to only be sick one time through the flu season.

Jaden is still having OT, Speech and PT come to the house almost weekly and he is doing Food therapy and speech at the clinic 2x's a week. We now have PCA's to help with my work load. The nurse who evaluates for PCA took all of every thing that Jaden is supposed to have done daily from brushing his body every 2 hours to mouth stimulation multiple times a day to his therapies and she got a total of 63 hours of "stuff" he needs done a week. I did not realize how much time he required until we really broke it done and looked at everything we do for him. Having a PCA helps take the load off of me which is wonderful and it will be easier to blog. YEAH!!!

We will keep in touch now so keep checking back and signing in.

Love to you all and many heart hugs...