My week

Since coming home from the hospital with Maelyn my stress level has actually been pretty low, compared to before she was born. But this week it caught up to me! I hate feeling so stressed but Tim was away for three days at a solar show in San Francisco, and he tends to be my source of positivism, optimism and he keeps me calm. So not only was I home alone with three little ones, doing night duty by myself, with a broken car, but when I started to worry, he didn't know and wasn't here to reel me back in. By Wednesday, his last day away, I was already exhausted and overwhelmed, and then Maelyn's oxygen dropped. I spent all morning watching her oxygen and preparing for the chance that she would need to go in for an appointment or even surgery. I had a friend on call ready to watch the boys if I needed, but I would have need to drive them there in my van with no AC in 90 degree weather. Her oxygen seemed to come back up a little bit to where I didn't think I would need to take her in, but I kept checking. Her nurse ended up giving me a call to check in because she was about to go on vacation. I told her what I had noticed, that Maelyn dropped from low 80's to mid-high 70's. Her nurse said as long as she is in the high 70's, I don't have to bring her in, but if she is in the low 70's we will need to do something. It most likely dropped because she is getting bigger. She has been at about 77% this week, once she gets below 75% we will need to schedule surgery. Those numbers being so close makes me nervous. For several important reasons, we need her to stay above 75% until August 24th, about 5 more weeks. If she can make it that long we will be able to skip the shunt surgery and go right to the Glen surgery. Other than her oxygen level being lower, she still seemed fine and is doing great.

I just checked her oxygen a couple hours ago and it was back up into the low 80's! Praise God! Please pray it stays!

Look at this girl! Getting so big!

So, my van... When I decided to stop working, we needed to get rid of my CX-9 car payment so we traded it in and paid cash for my '04 Freestar. When we bought it we didn't know that the AC was not working properly. I really like having a minivan, it is so much easier with kids, but this van was a head ache! So much that I named it P.O.C, or, piece of crap. The only thing I liked about it was that it is a van, and it was blue. I felt like there was always something wrong with it. Tim was constantly working on it and it usually came back to the AC not working. I was kind of surprised that it made the drive from PA to NY to CO without issues. Shortly after we moved here, while it was in a parking lot, it got seriously rear ended. Since it was already a crappy van and the repairs were going to be a decent amount, we decided to keep the money and leave the vans rear end smashed. Then it got side swiped in our drive way one night, I wont tell that story, but we didn't totally fix it. Then the dog hopped in after walking through mud, and we never cleaned it. At some point the lock system started going haywire, so sometimes it wouldn't lock or unlock. Once I had to leave it unlocked in the parking lot of the Denver zoo. I figured if someone stole it, they might be doing us a favor. The AC never ended up working in the rear of the car. It was in the shop for several weeks this winter and we probably put more money into it than we should have, but we were not in a place to buy a new one. Tim just spent about three days replacing the brakes and doing other various things. And then, the AC totally stopped working. It was already broken, but at least we could get cold air out of the front console. Now that Ben has moved to the very back seat, and we have a new born, AC is a must. When I tried taking Ben out one night he almost got sick because he was so hot in the back, he looked like he was about to pass out, so I basically stopped driving. We discussed getting a new van (again) but decided to take it back to the shop (again). I was getting really fed up with the amount of time we were spending fixing it and money we were putting into it trying to keep it going, so I was for buying a new one, but we were hoping it would last a couple more years so we could save up first. Anyway, we couldn't get it into the shop for over a week, and when we got it there yesterday, they said it would cost between $800-$3,000 to fix, and it probably would not even fix the problem in the long run. Needless to say, I was not sad to say goodbye to P.O.C. but I did snap a few goodbye pictures...

Smashed bumper and lift gate.

Hard to see but, side swiped with a brand new mirror.

Paw Printed driver seat (since January...).

Tim conceded and said, it was time, we need a new van and ASAP. Since I hated my van, I had spent years (not joking) researching and knew exactly the van I wanted, so really we just needed to have a discussion about financing and then I needed to show it to Tim. After talking about logistics, we realized that the only way we could physically go look at vans is to not have the boys with us, and that the only time we would be able to do that was right then. So Tim came home, we dropped the boys off, picked up my van and drove to the dealership. We looked at 2 models, one base and one with all the accessories. Then we had them look at trading in my van. They offered us $500 and I couldn't stop laughing. For all that we had just done to it and what the AC was going to cost us and just for the size of it, it was only worth $500. I still think it is funny. But Tim was able to talk them up to $1,000. It was late and we needed to pick up the boys and eat dinner and get the kids to bed so we were trying to leave, but they would not give us the key to my van! It was kind of ridiculous. We told them we were planning on buying one of the vans but needed to get our kids. Eventually we got the key from them. Tim agreed to come back an hour later to buy a van and get the $1,000 for mine, but he was mad at the way they handled it. We discussed the options while we ate and dealt with the kids. I ended up telling Tim to just leave and surprise me. Of course he brought me home my dream car! He spoils me. It was a stressful day and a stressful decision, but finally having a car that is not broken/about to break down, is such a relief and blessing. Worth it. 

My new car, Tulla, a blue 2015 Toyota Sienna

Here is our new house.