The Grand Announcement!

We had our ultrasound today and we were happy to find out that its a healthy baby! We were sure glad to find out that it had all ten fingers and toes and everything looked fine with the baby! We saw the baby open and close its hands quite a bit. Oh yeah...and...it's (not) a girl!!!! Yep, that's right...boy oh boy, Zach is getting a brother and Torrey is getting one more random tornado of destruction! We will try to post some of the pictures later...we just have to see if we can figure out the scanner. Future Grandkid count on the Olsen side: Boys: 10 Girls: 5 On the Mackey side Boys: 5 Girls: 5. Hmmm....either way the girls are NOT winning!

A Scratched Cornea

On Wednesday morning, Jessi comes running in from outside crying. "I hurt my eye!" she said. She explained that she was riding her bike and her thumb scratched across her eye. Hmmm...how does that work exactly? Well, Savannah spread a little light on the subject and I think it had something to do with "made you blink" and teasing...hard to tell exactly from the two differing sides of the story, but at any rate...she basically cried about it most of the day, so around 3pm I decided to take her in and see what was wrong. I could see that her eye was bloodshot, but only on the white part, as far as I could tell. We go in to visit the doctor, who is the NICEST doctor you will ever meet! In order to understand the setting here you have to realize that Jessi is a paranoid, super freak about going to the doctor (Sorry, Jess, but that's the truth!). She questions EVERYTHING...and gets very whine-y, jittery, and nervous about every move the doctors or nurses make. Just the threat of "Well, we might have to take you to the doctor..." is enough to make her toughen up and deal with whatever pain she is having.
So, before we even get to the doctor's office, her eyes are watering, and she is wimpering a bit. We walk in and the doctor was waiting for us. He said, "I'm gonna guess that you (pointing to Jessica) are the one I'm seeing today." I think the red crying eyes and the way she lagged behind everyone else were a dead giveaway! She nodded slowly and he said "Well, come on in and sit in my special chair!" So, she went in and he did the eye doctor thing...you know, "Can you read me the letters on this line?" Jessi squinted at them for a minute and finally said "Well, I could read them, but I think you put them up on the wall too small!". We all had a good laugh about that and he finally decided to stop trying to persuade the stubborn six year old to read the letters on the wall. We moved on. He looked in her eye and decided that in order to determine how deep the scratch was he was going to have to put drops in her eye. So he told her and she asked "Is it going to hurt?" He said "No, it won't hurt I'm just going to put some dye in your eye". Jessi's eyes welled up with tears, she got a look of horror on her face and said in a panicked voice..."I'm going to DIE???!!!". After we sorted out the difference between die and dye...the appointment went much smoother! Who knew that they put a contact in the eye of a 6 year old to heal a scratched cornea...ingenious! Keeps the eye moist which enhances healing, covers the scratch so it isn't constantly being rubbed on, and add a few antibiotic drops and we have a almost good as new six year old.
Funny side note about the eye drops, they were ordered for 6 times a day for four days. Jessi definitely had to "check my credentials" before she would allow me to do this. (Do you know what you are doing? Have you done this before? When you do it at the hospital is it on mommies or kids? etc.). I must have passed the inquisition because she is as good as can be about me putting the drops in now!

Heart Attacks and It's A Boy!

It was quite an exciting last few days at our house. My parents flew down to Atlanta to spend a week with my Mom's twin sister and her husband. Sunday morning, I get a call bright and early (especially since I had worked until 12:30 the night before) from my Mother saying that my father had had a heart attack and was in the hospital in Atlanta. My first thought was "Augh!...we have to get him back to Mayo!". But even though Mayo will life-flight their employees and family members back to Mayo for free in case of an emergency, that wasn't to be in this case. Well, I thought, he's in Atlanta, that's a big city, They should have adequate medical care...right? WRONG! The hospital that he was taken to said their "cath lab" was closed for Memorial Day weekend and they wouldn't be able to do a stent procedure until TUESDAY!!! WHAT??!! Do they dismiss all their patients on Fridays too so they can close for the weekend? I was disgusted! I grabbed out my nursing cardiac notes and started gathering ammunition. I called Kim, she is much more assertive than I am, and we talked, both deciding that Dad needed that procedure done TODAY and he needed to be transferred somewhere, anywhere, preferably Mayo. (I think possibly I have become a little spoiled at such premiere health care at my fingertips...!). After reviewing my nursing notes we felt that the longer they waited on the procedure the more damage my dad's heart would have, so Kim called my mom. In the end, my mom ended up calling a family friend who is a cardiologist here at the Clinic and between him, Kim, and my mom, they ended up getting my dad transferred to another hospital in Atlanta that had a 24/7 cath lab. The procedure was done on Sunday, his ALS artery was 100% blocked, so they stented it and he is now fine. When asked if he has any pain he states "only in my leg where they poked a huge hole!" He will be getting out of the hospital today hopefully and they will fly home on Friday. Fun vacation huh?
In other news.... Alex (my brother) and Janice had a baby boy yesterday, 8lb 4oz., 20 inches long. They named him Spencer Aniseko (the middle name is Samoan and was the name of Janice's father). He is very cute. Alex sent pictures and he is adorable!! While the grandchildren boys are NOT winning on my side of the family (5 girls and 4 boys), thanks to this new addition they are making a stronger stand, and could end up tied depending on what our baby ends up being...hopefully we will find out in the next 3-4 weeks!

C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-I-O-N!!!

I just want to shout and yell and scream...I AM OUT OF SCHOOL (at least for the summer!)!!!! I am sooooooooooooooo happy! I was getting so sick of school and am glad to have a summer break! This is my first summer break in 3 summers! It seems so do-able (is that a word!) now because when I go back it will be my LAST semester! YEAH! In celebration I spent the first day out of school cleaning my house! It felt so good, the second day was spent shopping for food! So, now we have a clean upstairs (still need to get to the downstairs) and food in our house again! Just wanted to share! I AM OUT OF SCHOOL!

Isn't he "dandy"?

Zach loves being outside. He can not get enough of it! He has discovered the empty field next door to us and LOVES picking dandelions. He calls them "dandies". It is just starting to consistently be above 50, so we haven't worn out the "outside time" yet! He zooms all over the field like a little bee from flower to flower picking and chattering away! It is so funny! Isn't he "dandy"? We think so!

Dance Recital Time!

Here are the girl's dance pictures. The feathery outfit is for tap. They are dancing to the song"Material Girl" by Madonna. It is hilarious! They have sunglasses and everything in the dance! It is really cute!

The peach costume is for ballet. It is a pretty dance too! I tried to get pictures during the dress rehearsal, but the lighting wasn't good and they didn't turn out too well. So you get these instead! They are VERY excited for their concert this weekend! I am sure they will do great!

Emergency Room visit number...3 or is it 4? (for this year anyway!)

It was a busy day yesterday! Zach and I played all morning and then we picked the girls up from school and rushed to dress rehearsal. After we finished that, I headed to Applebee's with the kids to meet some friends for dinner. We didn't get to see Brennon all day because he was at work in the morning and then he headed straight to the ball field for some umpiring. After dinner, we headed to Deb's farm to play with the animals. We saw a coyote, 5 dogs, 5 horses, 2 mules, about 80 cows, two birds, some cats and we were just on our way to see the goldfish when my cell phone rang. It wasn't a number I recognized so I almost didn't answer it, but I decided to anyway. Good thing because it was Brennon and he needed us to come to the ball field right away to take him to the ER. He had been standing behind the home plate when one of the players had hit a foul ball. It tipped off the end of the bat and flew straight into Brennon's nose. On the plus side, both teams he was umping for were from Mayo Clinic, so there were ALOT of nurses there...about 30! So, he was well taken care of until I got there. He bled quite a bit (from the inside of his nose and because the skin split on the outside of his nose), got his back rubbed, and had ice on his nose by the time I got to him. We went to the ER and surprise, surprise, his nose was broken in three places and he has a slight concussion. On the plus side, since the ball hit him straight on nothing was out of place yet! You never know what can happen as the swelling goes down, but at the moment it is all in alignment. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do for a broken nose except wait for the swelling to go down and see how it heals. If it doesn't heal well, then they can do things to help, but for now he is out of luck! So, 3 doctors, 2 vicodin, and 1 x-ray later, we headed home, put my 4 tired kids to bed (including Brennon of course), and crashed myself. He has some handsome black eyes today and is in a bit of pain, but it could of been worse!