Life, Love, and Loss

It has been an incredibly crazy summer!
Isabelle had surgery on her tongue at the beginning of June to have the fenulum clipped to help with her speech. She had a bit of a hard time with it afterward, but brightened up quickly with a steady diet of ice cream and Popsicles for the day, combined with two stuffed animals from the hospital and a special pony as a gift from mom and dad.

 Pre-surgery

Post-surgery - waiting for some Tylenol

Mid-June, we headed up to Michigan for our annual summer vacation and to attend Adam and Stephanie's wedding.
Monday before we left, we got a call from Howard saying that Nick's great aunt Nellie was in the hospital with pneumonia and was requesting to be discharged. She was sent home Monday evening and passed away Tuesday morning. A funeral was added to our travel plans for Thursday afternoon.
Tuesday before we left, I tripped on a dog bone while carrying a laundry basket and fell down a few stairs, which I really didn't think anything about, however, that combined with a 15 hour drive on Wednesday led me to the hospital on Thursday, in Alpena with a slight placental abruption. They kept me for observation for 24 hours, were satisfied that it had not increased in size by Friday and discharged me.  I missed the funeral, but was told that it was nice.
Friday was hall decoration and wedding rehearsal. The kids were crazy, as usual, but kept us all laughing. Isabelle and I had nail appointments scheduled, which I couldn't attend (still in the hospital), but Grandma brought her to get her fingers painted and she loved it! :) She, of course, picked a bright pink! She is so my girl!
Saturday was the wedding and it was absolutely beautiful! The kids performed well - emphasis on "performed" as they provided quite an entertaining show for the audience. We had quite a bumpy bus ride to Stephanie's family farm for photos. The kids LOVED it! I thought it might send me into labor!

We finally got to move into the cottage after the wedding reception Saturday night (we were supposed to check in Thursday). We had a mostly uneventful week following - beautiful weather and lake time - what more could you ask for?!

We took our time on the trip home, taking two days. It was much easier on my 37 week pregnant body!
On to July -
Amy and kids came out on the 11th to help me out with the kids and some things around the house before the baby was born. By the 15th, I began thinking the baby would never show up and Amy would have to leave before that day would come. I was scheduled for induction on the 16th to ensure the baby would come before Amy left! We checked into the hospital at 11am, started pitocin at 12pm, had baby Oliver Lewis at 5:10pm!

On the 25th, I took the dogs to the vet - Jake for his well visit, Elwood because he had been coughing for a couple weeks and I wanted to make sure he didn't have a cold or something. The vet wasn't sure what could be causing the cough, so he did an xray to be safe. The xray showed that Elwood had cancer in his lungs - hundreds of tumors and there was nothing to be done for him. The vet gave him some antibiotics for the fever that he had and some pain medication. The diagnosis was about 3 months. Nick and Belle took him for a nice long walk on Saturday in the woods - he was full of energy and ran like nothing was wrong with him. Monday morning, he was up with me at 1am while I fed Oliver and when I got up at 6am with Oliver, Elwood had passed away. We were definitely not expecting only 3 days with our old dog... We were struggling with a burial location, since we know that Maryland is not our final destination and we did not want to leave him here. We decided to have him cremated so that he can come with us, where ever we may end up. It has been lonely around here without him - Nick and I both have our special times of night where he was always by our sides and we are struggling most those times of the day. Jake is certainly missing his old friend, as he has never been without Elwood. We will miss his companionship daily!