Summer in Full Swing

Yet another week that was packed full!  We watched my brothers dog, Daisy, until Monday morning.  My kids were all very sad to see her go.

"Mom, take a picture of me and Daisy!"

Monday was also the start of swimming lessons!  Asher was accidently put in the wrong class, but I didn't notice until half way through the lesson.  So Tuesday I had to figure out what class he was actually supposed to be in.  It was a little bit of headache I didn't want, but it all worked out.  The kids all love swimming lessons and have a great time!

I found those swim caps for sale at Walmart.  I mainly bought them for them to use in our pool to try and save their hair a little this summer and I told the girls they didn't have to wear them to lessons if they didn't want to.  But they both wanted to and it makes it very easy to spot them!

Asher is on the end closest to the numbers.  He's becoming a pretty good swimmer!

On Sunday, David and I surprised the girls by telling them we'd signed them up for a summer ballet class.  They were so excited that the day of their class they got ready 3 hours early!  Their class is on Tuesdays for 6 weeks.  I'm not sure if we'll continue in the fall, but they had so much fun at the first one!  My neighbor has girls ages 6 and 7 and when my girls told her girls about their ballet class she asked me for the info because she was also looking for a ballet class for her girls.  It's very hard to find a dance studio that doesn't have a super long wait list, so I told her about the class and she signed her girls up!  So my girls get to do ballet and they get to have their friends in class too.  Win win!

Sweetie pie!

This is her excited face!

Living the dream!

I found out about a month ago that Pizza Hut still does personal pizzas if you sign up for their reading program and meet their goal (Reading 20 minutes a day for 20 days).  They reached the goal so they each got a pizza!  It was very nostalgic for me.

Thursday Ava had a doctors appointment with a pediatric general surgeon to look at the bump on her arm.  She has what this doctor called a lymphatic malformation (although I saw that it's called a bunch of other different things as well).  I had to do some extra reading to figure out exactly what it was.  This website was helpful: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/lymphatic-malformation From what I understand, we all have vessels going all through our bodies that are apart of the lymphatic system and carry things like white blood cells to fight off infection.  A lymphatic malformation is a big cluster of these vessels.  They are a growth, but not cancerous or really dangerous at all.  But, when your body gets an infection (like getting sick or in Ava's case, if she got a scrape or cut or hangnail on her hand that got infected) it can easily spread to that bundle of vessels and it will bring the infection there where it will get inflamed and cause problems.  Once it gets infected, the best thing to do is have a doctor take care of the malformation at that point anyways.  There is such a high chance of that happening that we just want to take care of it now before it becomes a problem.  I guess it most often happens on the face and neck, but it can happen anywhere on the body.  And it is something you are born with and there's nothing you can do to prevent it. 

The doctor said there are 2 ways to deal with it.  One is to surgically remove it.  In Ava's case, her lump is right next to a nerve.  If any part of it is touching the nerve they have to leave it there because if they try to get it off the nerve it could cause loss of feeling in her hand or even some loss of function.  And if they don't get it all there's a better chance it will come back.  But what we're going to try is called sclerotherapy.  They will inject a powerful antibiotic and try to kill off those vessels which will create some scar tissue.  They will have to put her under anesthesia for this and she will need to go through at least 2 treatments.  If that doesn't affect things we may have to think about the surgery.  So that's been in the back of my mind for the last few days, and I imagine will be something to give me anxiety until everything is over.  Her first treatment will be July 5th.

I've decided that surgeons are a different breed of doctor.  Every time we meet with a surgeon they are kind of weird people.  Her doctor was super nice and gave all my kids chocolates and gave them a little talk about how special all little kids are, so that was nice.  But he was definitely a little weird!

We finished off our busy week with a Haroldsen Family Reunion!  My Mom's brothers and sisters all got together in Rexburg at a park and had a potluck.  It was a lot of fun and my kids had a ton of fun.  On the way home Asher said it was really nice to have so much family around.  I agree!