Today, I am grateful.

It's been one year. One year ago today, actually. And she's still here.

Not only has it been a year and she's still here, but she's doing great. If you've spent any amount of time with this monkey in the last, oh, 11 months, you know that she's not what you think about when you think of 'kid with a heart problem'.

If you want to relive the journey - because, to be honest, I had to stop reading because I couldn't see through the tears - you can here: RobynHardman.Blogspot.com There is a link towards the top of her blog that if you click, it will take you to the beginning and the details of how we found out.

So even with Viral Myocarditis / Dilated Cardiomyopathy - my little Robynson is normal. She is healthy. She is happy. She is a wonderful, spunky, hyper-active and whiny little girl. Whom I love.

And now, I leave you with some pictures from this time last year...

The day before she was taken to Primary Children's by Life Flight.

When we thought she 'just' had pneumonia

Robyn strapped in 'her' helicopter - just before take off.

These ones make me sad. See all the wires and the 2 IVs and she also has a PICC line to her heart. And she was so sad. She missed her brothers. We have a few books with family pictures in them and that's all she wanted to look at. In the second picture, the pages she is looking at are of Colleenia and her family. That in itself is sad because Sean has now passed away...

And this is a bunch of pictures from her stay...

This is my favorite picture of her in the hospital...

This is the first day home - notice her hot pink bandage?

These are from followup visits when they monitored her heart activity while at home doing 'normal' things...

We have her ONE YEAR followup appointment on Monday. We will hopefully see how much progress she has made and see if she still needs the few medications that she is currently taking. I will update all that info on HER blog...

But for now, she is healthy. She is happy. She is a wonderful, spunky, hyper-active and whiny little girl. Whom I love.

Thanks for loving her.
Thanks for helping us while she was in the hospital.
Thanks for the get well cards and wishes.
Thanks for the prayers.
Thanks for the help.
Thanks for loving us.
Thanks for everything. :)
We love you all.

A Full Week of Fun, Collage Style

Last week the kids and I did SO many fun things together.

We swam... A LOT...

Thanks Roberts family, Bagley Family and Hartley Family!

We went to Uncle Jed,
Uncle Jake and Aunt Shaylee's house.

Archer was having a blast playing with the exercise ball in the backyard...

We went to the Thanksgiving
Point Children's Gardens
with some of our friends.

Thanks Rohrbach, DeVries, Dome and Roberts families!!!

And ...
we ended our fun week with
the Barlow Family Reunion.

Love you all!
Sorry I didn't take many pictures this time!
You all should send me the ones that YOU took!

Believe it or not, I have about 500 pictures from this last week that AREN'T included on here. And I forgot to pull out my camera for most of the reunion! So consider yourselves lucky!

Awesome Neighbors

I thought I would do a quick little post about our awesome upstairs neighbors (tenants) that everyone should be jealous of. :) For their privacy, I won't post their names. :)

Upstairs neighbor guy with Tanion / Robyn on July 5th...

They pay rent almost a month in advance. They don't mind when my crazy kids run as fast as they can into their house when the door is open. They are SUPER nice and friendly and invite us to come up and watch movies / play XBOX / eat food with them. They are great with our crazy kids - Robyn especially loves them! They gave my kids dress-up costumes. They are quiet. :) They have a little guy who is great with my kids. They have a beautiful baby girl (with tons of hair!) that I get to snuggle with.

They are just awesome.

So why the post now?

They've bought a pool. A nice (not the super small only for kids type but big!) awesome pool - that is FUN! That they are okay with if we take a family swim on a random hot night. :) That they actually encourage us to come out and soak in with them! YAY!!!

SO TONIGHT:

DarTanion started swimming (for like 4 seconds at a time until he has to breathe) on his own. Without a life vest. :) It's pretty awesome.

AND:

Archer wasn't afraid to be in the water. He even went into the middle all by himself. Granted he could touch the bottom and he spent the weekend with Aunt Jessa (thanks Jess!) and played in the water for most of the time. :) But still!

Progress, people. :)
My kids are making water progress.

And it's awesome.

Just like my neighbors. :)

SEVEN.

I'm a number person. Numbers make sense to me. I like things that are a play on number... DarTanion must have known this.

On 07/08/2003, DarTanion came into this world. He weighed in at 7lbs 8oz and was born at 12:30am. Notice the numbers? He was eager to please. :)

Today, my big boy turned seven. SEVEN! Where does the time go? How does that happen so fast? Each time he has a birthday, that age seems so much older. I was okay with 5 until he was 5. I was fine with 6 until he turned 6. And now - SEVEN! Man. He's so old!


He was SUCH a cute baby. I always got compliments on what a pretty baby (and what a cute girl) with such beautiful curly blonde hair and such big eyes! I still get compliments on what a cute kid he is. I used to say that his easy going attitude and total cuteness tricked us into having another baby so quickly!

DarTanion likes blankets with bears on it. I don't know if that is because his nursery was done in bears (blue jean teddy, to be exact) or because that's something he's just decided he likes. He doesn't seem to be embarrassed about who knows that he likes blankets. He calls them Lie Bears (not sure how he would spell that!) but I'm not sure how he came up with that one!

DarTanion is a leader and a follower. He likes to be in charge with most of his friends. He likes to boss them around (which probably comes from being the oldest). But he also will choose things that his friends like even though he knows nothing about that item / toy. I'm hoping that he will be a good example and a leader to them.

DarTanion has a girlfriend (and has since he was probably 2). Shandy is the only girl in his heart and I'm a little nervous about that. Shandy turned 16 last month and is now dating. We haven't dared tell DarTanion for fear of emotional breakdown. Even though he has other friends who are girls, only Shandy melts this kid. He'll go from mach-90 to zero with one word from her. She has power. And if she's smart, she'll stick around and wait for him. :)

I know that he looks like his daddy (which is good because Jeremiah's handsome), but I like to think that there is a little me in him. I like to take a little credit for his good looks. :) Jeremiah can take his awesome sense of personal style. :)
I love my little (BIG!) Tanny-man. He's such a good boy and a great joy to our whole family. I know that he understands more than I give him credit for. I know that he knows more than I'd like him to. I know that he'll be an amazing husband / dad one day. For now, he can just be my (oldest) baby boy.

Robyn's Blowey Flowers

I realized that some of you might not be on FaceBook or might not check my pictures faithfully (shame on you!) but I took some great ones of Robynson playing in the field by Twitch and Sandra's house that I think everyone should see. :)


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2069363&id=1147997604&l=8c76b39b08

Here are only 5 of the 80+ that I took. Maybe that will entice you to click on that link and see all the pretty pictures of my pretty girl playing with the Blowey Flowers (dead dandelions)...