What’s for Dinner {February 13,2014}

If you are new here, read my first What’s for Dinner post to get filled in on what the heck’s going on around here. If you have been to this rodeo before, let’s get down to business.

Oh boy, the last 24 hours have been very surprising, scary and yummy….how’s that for a strange combination?

Let’s work our way back and start with dinner and the other yummy things we ate today.

For dinner I made Beef and Barley Vegetable Soup. I also made rolls today so we ate them with the soup. Today we woke up to a little over a foot of snow. The kids and my husband were both home for the day. I took that as free reign to start cooking like a maniac.

I started the baking frenzy with banana bread, moved on to rolls and cinnamon rolls and then made some yummy risotto for lunch. Our neighbors brought us over some cupcakes this afternoon, so needless to say we are expecting the carbohydrate police to show up at any minute and arrest us for gluttony. But it has all been really yummy!

My kitchen has definitely paid the price, this is what was left after two rounds of dishes had been done.

Moving on to Scary: Last night was so awful and scary. Besides having Apraxia, Thatcher has had a very reactive airway since he was about five months old. Reactive Airway is a nice way of saying he pretty much has asthma, but we are hoping he grows out of it.

Off an on for the last 5 years he has needed nebulizer treatments fairly regularly and will often wake up in the night struggling to breath. In the last year and a half he has gone for months at a time without having these episodes and we have been very hopeful that he is indeed growing out of this reactive airway business.

The last episode he had was about three months ago and even though they are always a bit scary and heartbreaking we have always been able to get them under control with his nebulizer. Sometimes we’ve had to give him back-to-back treatments but it has always helped and he has been able to go back to sleep.

LAST NIGHT WAS TERRIBLE! He woke up struggling to breath! We gave him a nebulizer treatment. It seemed to do nothing at all so we gave him another one. Our doctor has told us that is what we should do because that is all they would do if we took him to the ER, but that we should never give him more then two. In the past two treatments has always done the trick.

Last night it made no change, it seemed to be getting worse. It was also snowing terribly outside and it wasn’t very safe to drive to the ER. We tried putting him in a steamy shower, we tried taking him out in the cold air…..all the things that help when a child is struggling to breath with the croup…..we were trying everything. All the while just praying and praying that he could pull out of it.

The worst part is that Thatcher kept trying to ask, “Why medicine not working?” He was scared too, and it was making it even worse. My husband gave him a priesthood blessing and I held him on the bathroom floor while the hot shower ran and ran and sang soothing songs about Jesus and family’s and tried to get him to relax. He finally seemed more relaxed but the breathing was still terrible. He wanted to get back on his bed, so my husband went in and slept on the floor by him. I laid in my bed and cried….wondering what we were going to do? Should we call an ambulance if it doesn’t get better? Could they even do anything to help him? Should we try and get out in the snow storm?

Less than two hours later, they were up again and it was just as bad or worse then before. My husband took him out in the cold air again, and then decided maybe it would help him to sleep in the recliner. They went downstairs and again, I went up in my bed and cried and prayed, and prayed some more. It’s such a helpless feeling when you can’t help your child breath. I just knew my husband would be up any minute to tell me we needed to call the ambulance or try to get to the ER.

I must have fallen back to sleep. They never did come up. When I woke up in the morning I heard Thatcher downstairs talking and although he was a little raspy he was breathing very well. I hurried down to give him a big hug and ask my husband what had happened in the night.

He said that when they went downstairs to the recliner, Thatcher was still having a really hard time. He said, he felt so helpless he desperately asked in Prayer, “WHAT DO I NEED TO DO, PLEASE HELP ME!” He said almost immediately he had an impression to give Thatcher one more blessing and to say the words, “Breath easy, relax and sleep.” Within five minutes Thatcher was asleep and his breathing was improving!

I was so grateful for that immediate answer to Sim’s Prayer! God is Good and wants to help us in our darkest hours, we just need to ask for help!

We tried to set up a Doctor appointment for Thatcher today, but of course the whole world is shutdown and probably still will be tomorrow. We are praying tonight will be better for Thatcher. So far so good.

Now for the surprising portion of  the last 24 hours. It has to do with this picture.

At about 10:30 last night, Sim just happened to be walking past our downstairs stairway and thought he heard a big gush of water. He ran down stairs and sure enough that black part on the pipe that is clamped on had burst off, because the outside pipe to our sub pump had frozen. WHAT??? He ran and got a neighbor to help him and they spent the next hour cleaning up water, re-clamping the pipe and thawing out the frozen pipe outside next to the house.

All I can say about that is HOLY COW, I AM SO GLAD WE HADN’T GONE TO BED YET, if we would have been in bed we would have never heard it and our whole basement would have flooded. Sim heard it and stopped it all with-in like 2 minutes. He’s a rockstar!!!

Well, here’s to hoping your last 24 hours were not quite that eventful!

Keep it Real!

Maria