Beaches, Birthdays and Trashcans

Celebrating Aaron today!!

He's 14 years old!

For John's 14th birthday week we were in Kentucky at the Yogi Bear Campground. This week (for Aaron's 14th) we spent a few days at Virginia Beach. They are four weeks apart which makes celebrating rather crazy!

Little girl had a ROUGH week of seizures and quite a number of emotional meltdowns but still had fun learning all about beaches and salt water and waves and sand!

All three were rather nervous about getting in the water. You can hardly blame them. Their disabilities make swimming in the waves quite the challenge. Aaron struggles to swim without the use of his upper body, John struggles to move in the water due to limited mobility in his legs and Mary has seizures every few minutes.

It's a bit of a recipe for disaster.

The first day we worked hard at helping them gain confidence. Translation - getting them to put their feet into the water.

We spent the second day playing in the sand since the first day's endeavors didn't pan out very well.  But after lunch they got bold and allowed us to take them deeper into the water. All three started enjoying the water as long as someone was holding onto them.

We spent the third day watching John and Aaron realize that they could tackle the waves on their own. What a fun day they had battling the waves together! Little girl thought she could also tackle  the waves on her own but with her seizure level so high we made sure to have a tight grip onto her!

I don't know what we would have done if Elijah hadn't been with us. We truly needed three hands for this 'vacation.'

It wasn't exactly the most relaxing away time but watching them enjoying the waves on the last day made all the work and stress and meltdowns and food issues worth it.

Little girl came home on Thursday and had a wrestling match with the trashcan and lost. Translation - she had a seizure and somehow fell in such a way that the trashcan hit her in the eye despite the fact that her helmet was on.

On Friday morning she had another round of non-stop seizures. We gave her the rescue med but before it kicked in she had a tonic/clonic seizure (grand mal). 

It's been a wild week.

We are rejoicing with Aaron, recovering from vacation and grieving the never-ending seizure story!