BMX State Championship

OK, Shane's turn to do a little writing. I had to correct a typo in Laura's last post, so what the heck, I thought I would take a turn. We leave tomorrow afternoon for Desoto, TX for the BMX state championship race at Metroplex BMX. This is the nicest track in Texas and probably one of the nicest tracks in the nation. It is owned and operated by the city of Desoto. We haven't been before, but we are very excited to see this awesome track. Jacob is currently ranked 3rd in the 8 intermediate class in state. He has improved so much since his first 8I race at the Cajun Nationals that I feel he has a shot at bringing home the championship this weekend. Regardless of what place he gets, we are so incredibly proud of him. I'm sure my stomach will be in absolute knots from the time the first qualifier gate drops until the finish of the main event. He will race a double points district race on Saturday, which may give us an idea of the competition for the state race on Sunday, assuming the riders on Sunday opt to ride on Saturday, as it is a separate race. We will be there with our team, Thor/Stmpo/AFX, who I expect also to have a very strong team finish. We have some of the best riders in the state. Go team! I am actually on the team as well, but am not yet brave enough to race at a State Championship. I'll stick to the local races for now ;-) We will be traveling with our friends the Hughes'. Actually, Ethan and Jeannette will ride up with us tomorrow and Larry will join us Sunday morning as he is promoting a Motocross series race in Conroe on Saturday. Please pray for safe travels and that Ethan, Jacob, and the Thor/Stmpo/AFX BMX team finish strong at the race. We are so excited.

On another note... I should go downstairs and wind down. Bryce has put himself to sleep while wide awake the last 2 nights, without having to be rocked to sleep, YAY! Not that we don't enjoy rocking him, but its all about him learning to put himself to sleep so that when he wakes up at night.... well, he can put himself back to sleep without us. Now that being said, last night didn't end as well as it started. He was up at 3:00 and 5:00. He did ultimately put himself back to sleep, but not exactly a huge success towards the goal of sleeping through the night. Our initial goal beyond the self soothing is for him to sleep from 10:00 to 6:00. Pray that tonight is the night. The waking and feeding in the early morning hours before his testing on Tuesday really set us back. Let's hope we are moving in the right direction. I'm telling you, the first night he sleeps through the night, I'm havin' a party. OK, maybe not, but I will be very happy. OK, that's it for me. I'm sure Laura will not be happy that I crashed her blog. It does say "The Cauley's" after all. Love you babe ;-)

Peace and God Bless!

Shane

Appt. at Texas Children's

Tomorrow we have to be at TCH at 7:30 am.....YUCK! That means that we have to leave our house at 6am to fight traffic. Mom will be coming over to get Jacob on the bus....thank you Mom. He has an ultrasound scheduled for 8am and and upper GI xray at 9:45. He is not allowed to eat after 4am. So, you can imagine that I am already stressed about crying, hungry baby. I am planning to get up at 3:30 am to feed him just enough to tide him over until the testing is done. That, of course, leads to another problem.

We have been sleep training Bryce for the last 5 nights. Jacob took one night of sleep training at 8 weeks old and then he slept through the night. Bryce is quite a bit more challenging. Shane and I take shifts each night. Luckily, only the first 2 nights were real tough. The last 2 nights he has started to put himself to sleep and then back to sleep during the night. He just has to be swaddled so I am going upstairs, reswaddling him, laying him back down and then he goes right back to sleep....Yeah! The dilemma is feeling him tonight might just set us back but I feel that is what we should do. I also ordered what is called a Miracle Blanket which is a swaddler that they supposedly can not get out of...wish us luck with that. I believe he would be sleeping through the night already if he couldn't get out of his swaddle. We have tried not swaddling him but he just won't have it.

Please keep us in your prayers tomorrow as we go in town and during the tests. I am looking forward to being able to feed him asap after the tests are done. We don't see the doctor until Sept. 11th. As for the time in between the tests and the doctor visit, he seems to be doing better on his new meds. But some days are still better than others.

**********************************************
In other news, Jacob started 3rd grade today. I just can't believe he is in the 3rd grade. Our neighbors have all told us this is the year for lots of homework. When he got off of the bus today, his first words were that he had to go home and prepare a power point presentation. Who ever thought 8 year olds would have that for homework? Shane spent some time with him preparing the presentation. It would have taken me lots longer to do it as I am rusty. He seems very happy so I think he had a great day at school.

God bless,
Laura

We Need Your Prayers

There are some hard things that we are having to deal with in our family so I would like to ask you for your prayers.

First, Bryce has been suffering from something that has not been firmly diagnosed since he was 6 weeks of age. At first, the doctor thought it was acid reflux as he was obviously in pain when he was eating. He does not spit up but has periods where he can't be still when he eats, doesn't eat and just fusses and fusses and won't sleep. We never know from one day to the next or from one night to the next how he will be and if he or we will get any sleep.

Last Friday, we saw a GI specialist. We explained his symptoms to her and she immediately made some changes. She upped his acid reflux meds and added another. She also ordered a chest xray, at my request, to make sure his heart looks ok. That was done last Friday and we haven't heard anything yet. On the 25th, we are going to Texas Children's for an upper GI xray and ultrasound of kidneys, gallbladder, etc. The upper GI xray may or may not confirm acid reflux and the ultrasound is to look for any abnormalities due to his birth deformity, hypospadias. I haven't talked yet about his hypospadias. We see a specialist for that next month and he will be having corrective surgery soon. So I will talk about that more later. But, it can lead to other internal problems and we need to see if that might be causing his pain.

He does seem to be more alert since we changed his meds. He does smile and follow things. But, he is delayed in his interactions with others and in his cooing. Bryce demands a lot of attention because he doesn't feel well. Please pray that God would heal him. That we would be able to find a diagnosis and a solution. The last few weeks have been very tough for us and we really need your prayers. Bryce still doesn't sleep through the night but he is starting to sleep in in the mornings. Yeah!

Second, Shane is very busy with work right now. So, I am having to deal with a lot on my own. He expects his busy time to last another couple of weeks.

Third, for some reason, my arthritis decided it would be a good time to spread to my shoulders. I have been in a lot of pain and carrying around 13 lbs. of baby doesn't help. I am on some new meds but still feeling the pain. I have had this arthritis since Jacob was about 10 months old. Did you know that the most common person to get arthritis is a woman in her 30's? Well, that's me and it really stinks. Over the years the joints that it affects has spread. The only major joint I don't yet have it in is my hips....looking forward to that someday. Not!

Last but not least, we found out that our sweet dog Riley who we rescued and found a wonderful home for last Christmas, has lost her companion dog. According to her new owner, she is very traumatized and runs from her. Her new owner is thinking of getting rid of her. This just breaks our hearts. We thought we had a perfect forever home for her and we may not. I am encouraging her new owner to get her a new companion dog. We will have to see what happens. This is Riley's 3rd home. She has been through so much. If we could take her back we would. If you know of anyone interested in owning a wonderful, sweet border collie, please let us know.

God bless,
Laura

Even More Colorado and the Perils of Flying Home

These are pictures from Shane and Jacob's hike. They made it almost to the top of the mountain when a bad storm came in and you don't mess with storms in the mountains. They had to turn around and come back down the mountain.

Randy came up from Denver to see us and to meet Bryce for the first time. We went to dinner and to the playground by the lake. The "boys" had fun.

We left the condo about noon the following day to fly home. We arrived at the airport for a 4:40 flight only to find out that our flight was delayed for a couple of hours due to maintenance. Then they informed us that a new tire was needed for the plane thus delaying the flight another 2 hours, which became a full 7 hour delay in the end. No other airline in Denver would loan thema tire and they had to fly one up from Houston. We knew we didn't have enough formula or diapers to last us that long. If we had stayed for the flight we wouldn't be getting home until 4am. Who would pick us up? So, the airline put us up in a hotel about 30 minutes away from the airport. They gave us plenty of food vouchers but who wants to survive on airport and hotel food? When we got to the hotel about 10pm, Shane had to jog under a freeway overpass to a grocery store to get us baby supplies. All in all, we handled that pretty well and we all had a reasonably good night's sleep.

The next day we got up, ate a terrible hotel breakfast and rode a shuttle to the airport. Guess what? That flight was delayed 4 1/2 hours. We were very prepared hauling around about 20 diapers and a whole can of formula but very perturbed. After a couple of hours, I walked up to the attendants and explained to them that we were not only on the delayed flight but had been through this the day before. The attendant immediately took our tickets and bumped us to the front of standby. Luckily, we made it on the next flight out which left before our delayed flight. We still didn't get home until 9pm but at least we made it home. Calling Continental for some sort of compensation is on my to do list. They also misplaced our car seat on the way up.....HMMMM!

More Colorado

One of the days in Colorado, Shane and Jacob went on a bike ride around the lake. They had a blast. Here are a couple of pictures from that outing and some others:

PawPaw and Bryce in the condo

Me and Bryce (he looks like he is tired of getting his picture taken)

Day at Breckenridge

We love Breck in the summer...specifically Peak 8. There are lots of fun things to do there but our favorite is the alpine sled. This year, Jacob was big enough to ride on his own. A lot of kids (and adults) go real slow on their own but not Jacob. He went as fast as his sled could go and I couldn't catch up with him. I am guessing the sleds go about 20 miles per hour. It's a lot of fun but this year we had a casualty.



On our second, and last, trip riding the sled down the mountain, I went around a corner and there in front of me on the track was a wounded chipmunk flopping around. I guessed that Jacob had hit it. I was going so fast I had no choice but to run over it and keep going. It broke my heart and I screamed "sorry" as I ran over it. I don't know what happened to it. I did tell the guys at the bottom of the mountain that there was a mortally wounded chipmunk that they needed to tend to (meaning put out of its misery) asap and they seemed to respond fast. I also noticed that no one came in behind me so maybe the person behind me was able to stop and tend to it. Jacob did say that he ran over its tail but I am thinking that he ran over more than just its tail.



The funny thing was after I hit the chipmunk I went around the next corner and there sitting on the edge of the track, not 6" from my face, was another very fat chipmunk. I thought I was going to be attacked. I just hope it was not the other one's mother. I can't believe after all these years that something like that would happen but I have a feeling that it is more common than one would think.


Jacob also did the bungee trampoline and some spinner ride. Then we headed into town and ate at our favorite restaurant in Breck, Giampiettro's. It's a little pizza/Italian place with about 8 tables.

Jacob on the spinner ride that goes in all directions...he loved it!

Bryce enjoying our outing :)

Doctors and Mine Tour's

On Monday morning we realized that Bryce had altitude sickness. He had stopped eating Sunday and ended up crying all night Sunday night. Shane and I were both worn out. So we took him to a doctor to check him out. His oxygen was ok. He had lost 10 oz in 2 days. We had the option of putting him on oxygen, going down to Denver to let him acclimate or just wait and see. We decided that he seemed better at the base of the mountain (about 1000 feet lower than our condo) and waited to see how he did that day. He definately started to acclimate that day but the rest of the week he was extra tired and fussy and didn't eat well. We went down the mountain as often as we could and we made it through the week. When we go to CO this Christmas we are planning on driving up and then spending a night at Randy's house in Denver. We are praying that does the trick and he can enjoy himself.



Every now and then we venture out and do something different while we are in Colorado. This year we took Jacob on a mine tour (http://www.countryboymine.com/). The tour takes about 45 minutes and you go about 1100 feet into the mountain. It was very interesting and very muddy and wet. I spent more time looking at where my feet were going than at the inside of the mine. It is definately not for someone who is claustrophobic. After the tour is over, you can pan for mine. Since is it was raining, we had to do it inside. This is something I would recommend to others to do.

This part of the mine is very low and we had to duck our heads.

That little blue and white round thing popping up behind Shane's back is Bryce


Bryce slept the whole time

Gold panning

Colorado Trip

It's that time again and it was a bittersweet trip. Our condo is being sold the end of September so we won't have a place to go to anymore. We will have to rent like the rest of the world.

We left on Friday, the 31st and got to the mountains that evening. The first day there we didn't do too much as we were all acclimating to the altitude. I think Jacob went to the pool that day and we all to lunch at our favorite restaurant and bowling, which was a lot of fun. Mom and Dad were at the condo with us. They were a lot of help that week with Bryce.

The second day there, Shane and Jacob rode down Keystone mountain. Jacob's brakes were too hard on his hands so he only went down once before PawPaw came to get him. Shane stayed and rode the rest of the day.

These are pics from Shane and Jacob's day: