The Patterson Family

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-29T20:21:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I know I haven't blogged in over two months. Things have been busy here, but I thought I would update everyone on what's going on here in sunny Arizona. Denny received notice a few weeks ago that Airtron may consider closing down the Phoenix office considering that the lease is up on their office this spring. Then, about a week later, he got another call saying that they were closing the Phoenix office and Denny had to share the news with his employees. A few days later, he was told that they may have a position for him in Houston, TX. We are considering that option and are actually heading to TX on Wednesday of this coming week to check out the area. Neither of us have ever been to Houston. Please pray for us to know God's will for our lives in this area.

My job is continuing to go well, it was been pretty busy the past couple of weeks. The girls and I have been fighting colds the past couple of weeks. Sadie had the croup last week and her and I actually made a trip to the ER on 11/20. They gave her an oral steriod as well as a breathing treatment and sent us home. She is recovering pretty well, but Trinity got a cold and now I have one too. I'm hoping that it goes away before our trip on Wednesday.

The girls are great other than their colds. They will be staying with our friends, The Fooks while we visit Texas. Hopefully they will do ok for them and not give them too much trouble at bedtime and other times of the day when they want Mommy and Daddy. Trinity will start speech therapy very soon and will continue going to preschool at the Fellowship Child Development Center until we possible make a move.

We had a good Thanksgiving, we spent the day hanging out as a family and had lunch with some friends and a bunch of their friends who also didn't have family in town. We missed spending the day with our family back home.

I think we are finally there...

2008-09-16T22:11:00.000-07:00

Last week Trinity's preschool asked to have a meeting with me about her potty training progress. I was pretty nervous about it because she loves school so much and I was really hoping she could stay but knew she was having more accidents than not. The meeting went really well though and we agreed that Trinity would stay home this week and we would get her potty training completed and then she would start back next week. We have tried about everything on this potty training thing, she only has issues with #2, but nothing seemed to be working. Then, miraculously on Sunday, she went on the potty without any prompting and has been continuing to do so ever since with only one accident, when we were out shopping yesterday. So, we are very hopeful that we have finally arrived at the end of the potty training journey, well during the day anyway.

We took Trinity riding on Mydnyght yesterday evening, pictures are on facebook - she absolutely loved it and Mydnyght is such a good boy. She ever rode by herself for a little while and held on tight to the saddle horn.

The taping for the news story mentioned in the last blog is scheduled for Thursday morning so I have been trying to get a little more organized and finished part of the living room painting project that I started on Monday before I remembered about the Thursday appointment. I finished painting most of the entertainment center wall, but Denny and I both don't like the paint color, so I'll be repainting all of it as soon as we pick a new color. This is the first time, in all of the painting that has been done in all three of the homes we have owned that I haven't liked a paint color once I got it up, so I guess that isn't so bad. And, at least its just paint instead of something more difficult and costly to replace.

Sadie is still growing like a weed - she turns six months old on Saturday - its gone so fast.

Ok, so its been awhile..

2008-09-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

Here is a silly picture of Sadie. Denny was putting her burb cloth on her head and she thought it was funny!

Not much new around here lately. We spent the entire Labor Day weekend fighting some type of stomach virus, which was no fun at all. At least we had a long weekend to recooperate. We can't believe its September already and Sadie will be 6 months old on the 20th of this month! Crazy how time flies!

CCV Neighborhood groups are back in full swing, so the last few weeks have been really busy with visiting neighborhood groups and organizing various items to go with them.

Sadie is going to be dedicated at CCV on 9/14 and we have a mandatory parenting class this weekend at church for the baby dedication. Should be interesting, plus they provide childcare so Denny and I will be able to sit through a two hour class without kiddos!

I've been trying to get some painting done in my free time when I can. I did this yellow (Denny calls it "school bus yellow") in the entry (shown) and as an accent wall in the office/den and am happy with how it turned out. Next I want to tackle the family room which will be a bigger project.

I was talking to a friend on Thursday that works for Channel 12 news and she was asking me about using facebook to keep in touch with family. Turns out that she wants to do a story on it, so on Sept. 18th we will be filmed in our house during our usual family routine and she will interview me about using facebook and we'll show shots of my facebook page - and all of this will be on tv! I'm a little nervous and excited at the same time!

Trinity still loves preschool and has made a little bit of progress with potty training, but we are still working on it.

We are looking forward to the weather cooling down and our trip to San Diego in early November and to hopefully having some family come to visit in the fall/winter. Talk to you later!

Tuesday

2008-08-19T12:44:00.001-07:00

Today the MOMS Club had an outing to the Tramonto Fire Station for a tour. Here is a pic of Trinity and some of the other kids inside the fire engine. She thought it was so neat that she went inside twice! We also listened to the firefighters tell us about not playing with fire and how to put out a fire if our clothes catch on fire - I think it went right over their heads! Then we went inside an everyone got a firemens hat and we saw their entirely stainless steel kitchen. Everything was stainless steel including the cabinets. That is so its easier to clean if one of the firemen has blood on their clothes and brushes up against something in the kitchen. Then we saw their dining room and TV room with a bunch of recliners and their dorm rooms. It was really neat! Lastly, one of the firemen pulled out the fire engine and let all of the kids take a turn at spraying the fire hose. Trinity thought this was great until it was her turn to spray - then she suddenly turned shy!

In other news, Sadie rolled over for the first time on Saturday from her back to the front. Once she's over she can't figure out how to get back though!

Gotta go!

Back Home Again...

2008-08-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

So we are back home again after a great trip to the Midwest. I can't even begin to explain how much better it was to travel back to Michigan and Indiana in the summer than in the winter. Although it is nice to be with family around the holidays, the stress factor alone made it worth switching up our travel plans. No flight delays, great weather, being able to be outdoors, all well worth it. We arrived in Grand Rapids on Tuesday, 8/5 with no problems. We had a short layover in Milwaukee before connecting to GR, but so short that we only had time to hit the restroom and grab a snack for Trinity before we were back on another plane. Trinity didn't nap on the first flight and both girls were asleep before we even took off in Milwaukee and slept the whole short 20 minute flight to GR. We spent three jam packed days with my family including a trip to the Binder Park Zoo in Battle Creek, a family BBQ at Leandra's new house and visits with my grandparents. We also took a long walk around Round Lake next to my parents neighborhood which was making us wish we were closer to lakefront properties in Arizona.

On Friday we made the 3.5 hour drive down to Swayzee to begin our visit with Denny's family. The drive was pretty uneventful which is always good. The girls slept pretty decent, they were fairly worn out by this time since we were never very successful with getting them to make the time change. It was almost easier to just put them down between 9-10pm and let them sleep in until 8am that way we didn't have to make such a drastic change back when we got home. Saturday 8/9 was Denny and my 11th anniversary. Denny's parents watched the girls for us and we went out to dinner in Fishers and then went to the Indiana State Fair. After that we decided to see if some friends of ours were home that lived down the road from us in Noblesville. They ended up being there which was amazing since they are in the process of moving to NY, so we visited with them for awhile and drove back up to Swayzee, getting back around midnight (a late night for us these days)! On Monday we left Swayzee for a day of visiting friends in the Indy area. We started out with a photo shoot with our friends from the Crux, Carpenter Photography and Design, we can't wait to get the pics back! After that, we stopped at our friends house, Chad & Stephanie and borrowed their extra vehicle and Denny and Trinity went to Airtron Indy to visit and Sadie and I went and ran some errands in Indy and stopped by Conseco to see PwC and Conseco friends. After that we headed back to the Lesnet's for a nap and then to Ben & Ari's in Fishers for our get together with everyone. It was so great to see so many good friends that we miss so much. Trinity had a great time and had no complaints when we put her to bed that evening. The next day we were up early to return our car and catch our 8:30 flight out of Indy. We got into Phoenix a little early and managed to get all of our stuff loaded into our vehicle and onto the road headed home.

Trinity started preschool on Wednesday and loves it so far. She is going to Fellowship Church in Anthem MWF from 9-3. On Friday she went to school in big girl panties and stayed dry all day, and even woke up dry from nap!

We have pictures from our trip posted on my facebook page, check them out!

One week and counting...

2008-07-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

One week from today we'll be making the final preparations for our trip to the Midwest. We fly out around 10am next Tuesday morning. We are looking forward to seeing family and friends and getting a short break from the heat. It will be interesting to see if it feels much cooler to us with the humidity in the midwest.

Sadie had her 4 month check up last Tuesday. She was 26" long and weighed 17 lbs 2 ounces! She had grown quite a bit even since her GI appt the week before. She had a great check up, the nurse practitioner thought she looked great and said we could start with solids. I've started her on some oatmeal cereal because I had tried rice a few times earlier and felt like it made her a little extra fussy. She has been doing well with it and I've noticed her sleeping longer at night when she has cereal for dinner. Her reflux also seems to be getting much better and we've finally been able to establish a bedtime routine with her and her evening crying and fussiness has significantly decreased - yeah!

Later last week I was looking at Sadie's baby carrier and realized that the height limit on the carrier is 26" and since Sadie was 26" already, we decided to make the change into the "big girl" seat. So, Sadie is in Trinity's old seat and Trinity has a convertible seat that had been in Denny's truck and we got a plain old booster seat for Denny's truck which is really nice and easy to use. I've realized that having Sadie in the big girl seat presents a little bit of a problem because she isn't really steady enough yet to sit in a high chair or a shopping cart, so shopping and eating out is a little challenging until she gets a little more stable!

Not much else going on here. On Friday night we went out to eat at the brand new Chili's right down the road from our neighborhood. This is when I first realized that Sadie couldn't really sit in a high chair. On Saturday, Denny took Scout out with the Bird Dog Club early in the morning and I had a MOMS Club board meeting at 8am, then we went to the pool twice, once before nap and once after. On Sunday we went to the late service at church and then went to Costco and Sportsman's Warehouse after nap.

New Addition to the Patterson Family

2008-07-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

Greetings! We are switching writers up this evening, this is Denny. Below are some pictures of the newest addition to the Patterson family. A 16 week old German Short Hair Pointer, named Scout.

Scout is bred to hunt. His close relatives were on the Outdoor Network last Monday. He is already pointing and fetching some. He also loves to carry things around shoes, toys, etc..

Alli our Beagle is not too sure of the new addition. Trinity
loves Scout as Scout is very playful with her. We picked
him up this afternoon right after lunch. He is a typical puppy with a superman nose. Now the training begins.

Thank you to all for the birthday cards and presents. We look forward to being back in the midwest in the next couple of weeks to see all of you.

Sara, Trinity, and Sadie are doing great. It is very exciting to see Trinity and Sadie doing new things. I am the luckiest guy in the world with the worlds best wife and best two daughters...of course I am a little biased.

We miss all of you and hope to see you all soon.

much love,

Denny

Sadie's GI Appointment

2008-07-16T21:06:00.001-07:00

Well, I finally got tired enough of dealing with Sadie's reflux and associated fussiness, especially at bedtime, that I persuaded the pediatrician to get us in with the GI Specialist, ASAP. We were put on the urgent waiting list last Monday, which meant they would call us when a cancellation occurred and we would be able to get in within three weeks. Yesterday I got a call that she could be seen today - hooray! The appointment went really well and I felt confident after leaving that we had a reasonable plan of attack to get this thing conquered. He changed her meds from Zantac to Axid for us to give a try, and also significantly increased her dosage, especially in the evening when she is typically very fussy and in pain from the reflux. I gave her the first dose of the new meds at the higher dose tonight and I'll have to say that I have already noticed a change in her temperament and it was easier to get her down for bed. We are praying for many repeat performances! I was also interested to see how much Sadie weighed by now, since her last official weight check was quite awhile ago and she will be four months on the 20th. She weighed 14 lbs 14ozs at her last check up and now she weighs 16lbs 8ozs! I've started affectionately calling her my little butterball! Check out her thighs and the little rolls - so cute. I looked back through Trinity's records and she weighed 16.7 lbs at her 6 mo check, so Sadie has already got that beat at 4 mos!

Denny turns 33 on Friday and we have a date night scheduled! We have made an arrangement with a couple from our church to swap babysitting and we watched their two kids last Friday and they are going to watch ours this Friday. Since its Denny's birthday, he is deciding what we do, but I imagine it will involve dinner, the motorcycle and maybe shooting at the gun club just down the road.

Not much else new here in the Patterson household, just surviving through the hot days and looking forward to our visit to the Midwest in a couple of weeks!

Happy Fourth of July weekend!

2008-07-06T21:17:00.001-07:00

We had a great weekend, I hope you did too! We started the weekend on Thursday night with a trip to Anthem for their Independence Day Celebration. They had all kinds of activities for the kids including lots of inflatable jumping contraptions, ones with water, carnival type rides and of course fireworks. It was Trinity's first fireworks show and she liked it for the first few minutes but was ready to go part way through! It was 101 degrees at 9pm for the fireworks, but didn't feel so bad after the 114 degree highs we have been having for the past several days.

On Friday, the 4th, we decided to drive up to Prescott to escape the heat and see what they had going on for the holiday weekend. It was a great day there, highs in upper 70's and they had a thunderstorm roll through where it rained hard for about 20 minutes, and had a little bit of hail. We walked around an art exhibit at the courthouse square and bought a new piece of artwork. Afterwards we drove around the town for a little while and then headed back home to the heat.

We spent Saturday hanging out at home for the most part and went to the pool in our neighborhood after dinner.

Today we went to church this morning and then went to the waterpark where we have season passes after naptime. Trinity always has a great time at the waterpark and there are several shady areas where you can be in the shade and still get in the water, so Sadie spent alot of time in these areas, along with either myself or Denny, of course.

I think I have a work from home arrangement worked out with PwC. We are still in the process of formalizing it, but right now I am working 10 hours per week from home supporting the Conseco engagement in Indianapolis. My HR rep is also working at possibly getting another 10 hours for me based out of Phoenix.

Trinity has been staying home with me the past couple of weeks since I am no longer employed full time. So far it is going really well and we have noticed a significant change in Trinity's disposition, she isn't really as whiny, which is a great thing! We have a daily schedule in place and I am working to get Sadie and Trinity to nap at the same time so I can work during that time. I am also going to enroll Trinity is preschool starting August 11th, she will go on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at Fellowship Church in Anthem, which means we will have to kick start the potty training a bit more. Speaking of potty training, I did an experiment last week by taking away Trinity's diapers and having her just wear panties to see if she was just using the diapers as a crutch to not potty train. She did ok with this as long as I took her to the potty every 30 minutes, but even so, she still had 2-3 accidents per day and hasn't made any progress with telling us when she has to go. I don't think this kid is ever going to potty train - I guess that's one way to keep the boys away when she gets older!

Is it Wednesday already?

2008-06-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry, its been awhile since I have posted, we have been dealing with a sick kid since Sunday afternoon. Trinity picked up some kind of stomach bug somewhere and we have been trying to get her over that and sleeping through the night again since then. I took her into the pediatrician on Monday morning because I wanted to make sure she didn't have an ear infection since the last couple of times she has been seen the doctors have mentioned that one of her tubes wasn't correctly in place any longer. We saw the NP and determined that she didn't have an ear infection or strep throat and that this was probably a stomach bug that was going around in the Valley and was very contagious - wonderful ;(. On Tuesday I called back and talk to the triage nurse because she was still vomiting and it had been over 48 hours of fever and essentially keeping nothing down. She asked what Trinity had been drinking in the past 24 hours and I said nothing but water. She then informed me that water was one of the worst things to give a sick kid (next to milk) because it was hard on their stomach and instead I should be giving her soda (hmm, try to figure that one out)! So, she explained to me the "vomiting protocol" for the next 8 hours and told me that she shouldn't vomit anymore if we followed it and if she does to call back and get her seen. I started following the protocol immediately and within 2 hours (of drinking soda every 15 minutes!) she had perked up considerably and by the end of the day was wanting to play and was asking for candy (of course, that's the logical thing to eat after being sick, right?). If only the NP that I had seen on Monday had given me the protocol, we probably could have had her feeling better on Monday and wouldn't have had to cancel playgroup at our house and the date night that Denny and I had scheduled for Tuesday :(. Oh well, now I will know for next time, I guess.

Sadie is growing like a weed and seems to be starting to get over her colickly fits in the evenings somewhat. We still have some fussy nights but they seem to be getting fewer and shorter. She has been chugging 6 ounce bottles every three hours and sometimes wants to eat again before three hours. If this keeps up and she's still acting hungry, I may try to start her on a little cereal. She'll be 14 weeks old tomorrow, so we are only two weeks from the 4 month milestone for starting solids. I am looking forward to seeing her experience the new tastes and the messy baby pictures that always result from that!

Sedona

2008-06-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

My mom and sister have been visiting with us since Tuesday and on Thursday evening our friends, Chad, Stephanie and Kai Lesnet came to our house for dinner since they were staying with some friends in Tucson and Phoenix. It was great to see them and get to meet their little boy for the first time.

Denny took Friday afternoon off from work and all six of us packed into his truck and headed up to Sedona for the day. We went to Slide Rock State Park, which was really neat, but the water was pretty chilly since it comes down from the mountains in the upper elevations and the rocks underneath the water were pretty slick so we had to hold onto Trinity's had when we were in the water. Here is a picture of Denny and Trinity on one of the slides. There were also some places where the water was deep enough that you could jump from the rocks into the water below. Denny and Lisa both did a jump that was about 10 feet or so up, but downstream a little ways there was an area where people (mostly kids) were doing a 30 foot and 40-45 foot jump - yikes! The thing about these one was the water was shallow enough to stand only waist high just a few yards from where they were jumping. After the park, we had dinner at Pizza Picazzo's in Sedona - it was really yummy. We were able to order two medium pizzas and get our half however we wanted so we had a bigger variety of pizzas, from Hawaiian to BBQ Chicken! Afterwards to headed home - everyone was tired and it was a pretty quiet ride!

Whew!

2008-06-09T18:45:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy past couple of days! Our friends from Indianapolis, Jeremy and Doni and their 2yo daughter Ava were here from Wednesday night until Saturday afternoon. They explored Phoenix during the day and we took turns with them in the evenings watching the kids so they could go out by themselves one night and then Denny and I went the next night. We took our first ride together on the new bike after we went and bought a riding helmet for me. We rode to Black Canyon City and went to a "biker" restaurant there, we felt a little out of place but the food was good. Afterwards we rode through the country and visited Mydnyght at the barn. On Saturday both families went to Tolmachoff Farms (http://www.tolmachoff-farms.com/) for Family Farm Day. It was pretty warm outside, but Trinity still had a great time.

Today was Sadie's appointment with the Nephrologist at Phoenix Children's Hospital. Everything went great there, after about the tenth try, there were finally able to get a good reading which came back normal. Dr. Papez got 1 or 2 more normal readings and explained that the lower readings are hard to get by accident, but it is pretty easy to get a false high reading. That along with the fact that she is growing great (she weighed just over 14 lbs today at 11.5 weeks!) and a few other things led her to believe that everything was fine. She had us get a urine culture just to be sure, but anticipated that everything was fine and we wouldn't need to come back unless something unusual were to give us concern again. That was a huge answer to prayer and relief for us! Dr. Papez thought our gives were adorable and she said she was sad that she wouldn't see us again. We really liked her, but don't share that sentiment because that would mean something is wrong.

I have a meeting tonight with the Mom's Club of Tramonto. I have volunteered to be Treasurer for the organization. Oh, and we also decided to pass on the full time position at the daycare for Sadie and it looks like I am going to quit my job. My supervisor finally contacted me by email about my Flexible Work Arrangement and wants to talk soon.

Should I stay or should I go now?

2008-06-04T10:53:00.001-07:00

I received an email from the daycare director where Trinity has been going to school last week saying that they had an opening in the infant room for Sadie now and asking when I would like to start her care. My maternity leave is scheduled to end on June 27th and I would return to work on June 30th. So, I informed the director that I would like to start bringing Sadie a couple of weeks before then for one day one week, then two days and then by the week of the 30th, she would be up to my part time schedule of three days per week. I thought this would work well for us and never imagined that it would be a problem with the daycare. Then, yesterday when I dropped Trinity off for school, the director said that she needed to talk to me about Sadie and that they have stopped doing part time enrollment for new students, especially in the infant room since they have a waiting list. That means that I would have to pay full time rates, an extra $360 per month or try to find somewhere else to take Sadie or both of the girls. I went home and called a few daycare centers in the area and none of them took infants part time, so then I decided to take a look at our budget and realized that if we cut a few things out of our budget, it probably made better sense for me to quit and stay home with the girls than to work to bring home a very small paycheck after paying for daycare expenses. So, this is something to be praying about, I told the daycare director what I was thinking and that I would let her know for sure on Friday.

Trinity is three!!

2008-06-01T21:06:00.000-07:00

Trinity turned three on May 28th - we can hardly believe she's been around for three years already! We had cupcakes and opened a few presents on her actual birthday and then had a party at the pool in our neighborhood with a few friends on Saturday afternoon. On Friday, her new kitchen was delivered and we put it together on Friday afternoon. She has been having fun making us pretend coffee, cookies and pizza!

She had a great time at her birthday party, but stayed up way too late and was exhausted today. We went to the water park this afternoon and dealt with a fairly tired, cranky and hungry youngster on the way home. It doesn't help much that she continues to get up at 5:30 in the morning and then didn't take much of a nap today. We are really starting to wish there was some way to make toddlers sleep longer!

Sadie is still doing well. She has been more fussy than usual the past few days and we are thinking that her reflux medicine needs adjusted a little bit more since she has gained weight since the prescription was written.

That's about all that's new with us this week, other than the fact that we shelled out a whole bunch of money to buy plane tickets to go back home to the midwest for a week in August. We are looking forward to visiting family and friends, but not looking forward to the actual traveling part, especially with two children now. Sadie will be 5 1/2 months when we take the trip, so hopefully she will do ok.

Memorial Day Weekend

2008-05-26T20:37:00.000-07:00

The long weekend is sadly coming to an end. On Saturday morning we made the 2.5 hour trip down to Tucson with the girls to visit our friends from Indianapolis, Seth & Kindra and their 14 month old son, Brandt. After spending the first hour or so just to get outside the city limits of Phoenix and suburbs, you enter an area of desert desolation with not much to look at but the tumbling tumbleweeds. We had a great visit with the Baron's hanging out at their home and attending the church that they are now on staff at in Tucson. After church we went out to dinner and then everyone went back to the condo that we had rented. I found a great deal online and we were able to secure a plush 2 bedroom condo on a pro golf course for only $159 per night at the Casitas at Sabino Springs (http://www.casitasatsabinosprings.com/). We highly recommend it if you need a place to stay in Tucson. On Sunday morning, we hung out at the resort for awhile and then went back to the Baron's and cooked out for lunch, then headed back home in the afternoon. Here are some pictures of Brandt and Trinity having a snack and playing together.

On Monday we went to the playground in the morning and to a cookout at the neighbors house in the afternoon. We hope everyone had a great weekend!

It's Friday!

2008-05-23T21:05:00.001-07:00

Today reminded me of a midwestern day, it was cold, cloudy and rainy all day, very rare in the desert. It looks like we are back to sunny days for the rest of the weekend, but still on the cool side, which is ok with us.

An update on Sadie...I forgot to mention in the posting about her hospital stay that there was a little bit of an issue at the hospital concerning Sadie's blood pressure. The nurses didn't seem very skilled at taking her pressure (apparently it is hard to do on a newborn), but were getting high readings on many occasions, around 115/80 or so. They were finally able to get a normal reading the evening before she went home for the hospital, when they took it during the night when she had been sleeping. Nonetheless, I decided to ask the pediatrician about it at her 2 month check-up on Wednesday. The doctor took her blood pressure then and came back with a reading of 107/80. He wants Sadie to see a nephrologist (kidney specialist), so on June 9th, she will be going to Phoenix Children's Hospital to see this doctor. Just something to be praying about, the doctor said that alot of times when babies have high blood pressure it is due to the kidneys or the heart. We are praying that the high readings were just due to the extra stress of being sick and in the hospital and that there isn't anything wrong with her. Other than working through this, Sadie is doing great. She still has fussy time but it doesn't last nearly as long as it used to and we've figured out how to get her settled down pretty quickly. She weighed 13 pounds and was 23 3/4 inches long.

Trinity had her 3 year check up at the same time, she turns three next Wednesday (May 28th). She weighs 32.5 pounds and is three feet tall! She is learning tons of new words every day and give us much joy! She has recently started saying, "thank you, mommy" without prompting, when I do something for her, which is nice to hear!

Denny and I had our first date tonight since Sadie arrived! We went and saw the new Narnia movie, Prince Caspian - it was awesome! Then we tried a new gourment pizza place called "Sauce," it was really good! We were still home by 8:30, but at least Sadie didn't give the babysitter too much trouble!

We are off to Tucson tomorrow for one night - we'll see how Sadie does in strange surroundings. We are going to brave it for just one night to see how it goes and since we will only be 2.5 hours away, we can pack up and head home if need be! Although packing up all of her stuff with be a major undertaking in itself.

Hope everything has a great Memorial Day weekend!

Triple digit temps are here!

2008-05-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

I guess we should count ourselves lucky because we made it all the way to May 19th before hitting triple digits and it came in with a bang at 110 degrees, a record high! The bad part about having awesome weather for most of the year is being stuck indoors for alot of the time during the summer. I wanted to go for a walk this evening, but it was still 104 degrees at 8pm and didn't think I should take Sadie along, and since our dog Ally is getting up there in age, we are keeping her out of the extreme heat as well. So, I went on a walk by myself which isn't a bad thing either, now and then! The temperatures are forecasted to come back down on Wednesday. We are looking forward to the three day weekend and Trinity turning three next week Wednesday!

Sadie's hospital stay

2008-05-17T16:56:00.000-07:00

Well, Sadie finally got to come home from the hospital today. I never imagined when I decided to take her in to the emergency room on Wednesday night (ok, really early Thursday morning) that we would end up admitted to the hospital for over 48 hours. Here's the story...

Sadie was pretty restless when I put her down to bed on Wednesday night but I didn't notice a fever at the time. It took her awhile to fall asleep, she usually goes right down, and was still restless at midnight when I finally dozed off. Around 1:15am she woke up crying, she doesn't usually take a bottle until between 3-4am. I reluctantly decided to go get a bottle ready for her and as soon as I picked her up, I noticed that she felt warm. I took her temperature - it was 100.7. Right away I woke up Denny and we decided that I would take her in to the ER. Once we got there, the doctor told me that Sadie would be fine, but for babies this young, its not as simple as sending them home with some Tylenol. They had to do a full work-up including, a spinal tap (yikes), blood cultures, urine cultures and chest x-rays, and that she would have to be admitted for 24-48 hours on antibiotics just in case she had an infection. Everyone was great at the ER, but for whatever reason they couldn't get much right and she had to have every procedure done twice, except for the x-rays, which did not make me, or especially her, very happy. After a couple of hours at the ER, with everything coming back negative, they told me that they didn't have any Peds beds open at that hospital and that they were moving us via ambulance to St. Joseph's Hospital in downtown Phoenix. The doctor at the ER thought she might have a touch of pneumonia and around 5:30 Thursday morning, we boarded the ambulance to make the trip downtown.

Once at St. Joseph's we were admitted and the resident physician looked over everything. He did not think Sadie had pneumonia and by this time her fever was completely gone and her lungs sounded clear. From this point on we were just playing a waiting game for a bacteria to grow on her cultures, which they checked every 24 hours, with Sadie receiving IV antibiotics every six hours. After the first 24 hours, nothing showed up, but the doctor wanted us to stay another 24 just to be sure. After another 24 (Saturday morning), there was still no sign of bacterial infection and we were allowed to go home. Just as we suspected from the beginning, Sadie had caught the cold that the rest of the family was recovering from, which gave her a slight fever, but it was just a virus and nothing serious.

We are thankful for the great doctors and nurses that attending to Sadie (especially at Mendy's Place), and are very grateful that our two beautiful girls are healthy and home with us this evening. Being at the hospital for an extended period to time, we were able to witness first hand some of the other children in the unit that are very sick and we are counting our blessing and praying for God's continued blessing and protection on our family. Thank you also to all the family and friends that were praying for us.

Love, The Patterson

Bennett boys vs Patterson girls

2008-05-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night our friends arrived from Colorado and our house was invaded by BOYS! It was quite different having boys in the house and we quickly realized the difference between raising boys and girls. Cal and Torrin and great young boys, they are just very active and physical, as boys are. Trinity thought it was great and took the body slamming and running around like a champ, up to a point! As soon as they arrived we went to the pool in our neighborhood to let the kids blow off some steam. The Bennett's had been in the car for 13 hours straight! After the pool and pizza, we called it a day for Trinity. The next morning (Mother's Day) the kids were up bright and early at 5:30 am, had donuts for breakfast and then decided it was time to go for a morning swim in our inflatable pool in the backyard. The water was freezing, but who cares! That worked out ok until they dumped bubbles into the pool making it really slippery and they started wiping out every time they stepped in. We drained the pool and started over until they were blue from the cold. By this time it was getting close to, oh 8am or so and Trinity was already ready for a nap! Em and Eric had to get packed up for the rest of their road trip down to Rocky Point, Mexico. It was great to see them - hopefully it won't be another 2 years before we see them again.

Mother's Day pretty much proceeded as a regular day for us. After Em and Eric left, we quickly got ready for church and went to the 11:15am service. We left Sadie in the nursery for the first time - she did great. We had leftover pizza for lunch and everyone took a nap. I got two very nice cards, one from Denny and one from the girls as well as a nice Nike running outfit and some Nike socks (my favorite for running). I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day - until next time...

Pictures!!

2008-05-09T10:22:00.000-07:00

Nothing much new to report here. Sadie's medicine seems to be kicking in and making a difference. She hasn't been nearly as fussy the past two evenings - hoorah!

We had a photo shoot of the girls done a couple of weeks ago and some of my favorites are posted on my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=17732&l=535f7&id=520784636. Check them out - you will need to create an account if you don't have one yet.

I'm glad its Friday and we are excited to have friends Emily & Eric and their sons Calen and Torrin visit on Saturday night on their way through to Mexico for a vacation. Emily and I were roommates all through college at IWU and they now live in the Denver area.

Have a great weekend!

Sadie weighs in at 12.5 pounds at 6 1/2 weeks!

2008-05-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

Today we made a trip to the doctors office because Sadie has been showing signs of acid reflux the past couple of days. I wanted to get it handled early since I know what it is after dealing with it in Trinity for so long. Unfortunately we didn't figure it our with her until she was 10 week or so. I was excited to see that Sadie now weighs 12.5 pounds at six and a half weeks old. The doctor gave us a prescription for Zantac, so we are hoping that her fussy times will ease up a little bit.

Lots of Smiles

2008-05-04T20:30:00.000-07:00

Sadie has been smiling, laughing and cooing for about the past week and a half. Here are two picture I took of her today when she was smiling at me!

Wildlife World Zoo!

2008-05-03T21:17:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I guess I need to get going on this blog thing if I'm going to have one. Today was a beautiful day in Phoenix, highs in the upper 80's. Sadie is doing well, she has been getting up just once per night usually around 2:30-3:30am and then back to her three hour schedule after that. Trinity has recently become quite an early riser, either because of Sadie getting up around 5:30am or because the sun is coming up earlier. But, thankfully she has recently developed quite an interest in "movies" as she calls them and we are able to turn on the tv in our bedroom and she watches the Disney channel while we snooze for another hour or so.

We started our weekend with a trip to the park in our neighborhood followed by lunch at McDonald's, after nap we decided to go to the Wildlife World Zoo http://www.wildlifeworld.com/ just outside of the city limits in the West valley. We had been to the Phoenix Zoo several times but decided not to renew our membership this year because of the distance from our home. We were pleasantly surprised with the WWZ, the exhibits were great, the price much better than the big zoo and all of the animals were active and easily viewed. Here are a couple of pictures from our trip.

Trinity loved the trip and was running from exhibit to exhibit anxiously wanting to see the next animals. She knows what all of the animals are called now and it was neat to see her excitement and to recognize the animals. Sadie peacefully snoozed through our entire visit to the zoo without so much as a peep. We should have known we were in for a doozie of an evening!

After the zoo, we decided to go to Applebee's for dinner, we had a gift card from a friend. Sadie started to stir a little bit on the ride to the restaurant and by the time we were seated, it was a full fledged wail, not to be quieted by food, diaper changing, burping or rocking. Denny and I ended up taking turns eating, and keeping Trinity busy while the other one went outside with our screaming child so we didn't disturb the other guests. After eating in shifts, we quickly exited the restaurant and made it home to put Trinity in bed and endure another hour and a half of yelling before she finally nodded off to sleep. Yes, we remember these days from when Trinity was little and were hoping to not have to repeat them...

Welcome to our blog!

2008-04-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

I have enjoyed reading blogs for other friends and thought I would give it a try myself - welcome and happy reading!