Make A Wish Kickoff Party

Today, two volunteers from the Make A Wish Foundation of Wisconsin, Shelley and Janelle, came to our house to give Paige a Make A Wish "kickoff party" in preparation for her Make A Wish Trip in 18 days. A few family members and neighbors came over to enjoy pizza, cake and ice cream thanks to the Make A Wish Foundation.  Megan even made a special trip from college to come to the party.

Nana and Paige checking out the princesses on the cake: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Belle.

Shelley began the extravaganza by presenting Paige with her tiara for the trip.

This is pretty cool.

Then Shelley gave Paige gift after gift, including Disney Princess games, Disney books, a Disney autograph book (for the princesses to sign at Disney World), a Disney puzzle, a Disney beauty set and a Cinderella doll. 

And Minnie Mouse. 

Mr. Flood (off camera) was making silly Daffy Duck noises sending Paige into a fit of laughter. Paige later turned Mr. Flood into a toad with her magic wand. Note to Mrs. Flood: you can come to our house and get the wand if the toad isn't working out for you.

Next, Janelle presented Paige with a beautiful sparkly tiara and a princess dress to wear for her visit to the Bippity Boppity Boutique at Disney.

And then both Shelley and Janelle told Paige all about her upcoming trip, including her tickets to Disney,  Universal Studios and SeaWorld, as well as her ride in a parade while at Disney.

Wow, this is sounding like a pretty fun trip!!!

Then everyone had cake and ice cream. With sprinkles.

Paige asked me to tell everyone:  "oh that party was so much fun!" (Mom please make sure to put in an exclamation point).

Today is April 28th. We leave for Paige's Make A Wish trip in 20 days. The countdown has begun.

A few weeks back we had a relatively minor medical 'bump in the road' when Paige's pediatrician noticed one of her legs was slightly shorter than the other. Last week we met with an orthopedic surgeon at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin who confirmed Paige's left leg is about 2 centimeters shorter than her right leg. Presently it does not pose much of a problem, but we have to monitor her growth to confirm if the limb length discrepancy increases. When he began discussing possible surgical intervention it became  sort of a 'Charlie Brown' moment for me (if you ever watched a Charlie Brown TV special, you know the sound the teacher's voice makes when she talks to Charlie Brown - all you can hear is a muffled 'whooaw-whooaw-whooaw-whooaw-whooaw').

We have another appointment with another specialist at Children's Hospital next week. 

I'm glad to report we had a handful of nice warm spring days within the last few weeks, sprinkled in between days of snow, hail and freezing rain. Last week Paige's kindergarten class had their Easter party and we were fortunate to have a warm sunny day. The kids got to decorate a cookie, make several Easter related art projects and also go on an egg hunt. I was able to volunteer to help out with the party.

Paige's class went outside and patiently lined up to hunt for eggs. I took this photo the second they all sprinted off to find the eggs. Paige is 6th from the left in this photo:

A few days later we colored our Easter eggs.

And then Easter morning Paige went to hunt for the eggs that the Easter Bunny had hidden throughout the house. She had misplaced her basket so she and I agreed she could store a few of the eggs in my lap.

This was right about when she figured out there were a few plastic eggs with candy or dollar bills (when she found a dollar bill inside an egg she'd yell out "money!").

Eggs are fun. At least on Easter.

Several days earlier when Dad was at work, Paige and Mom had a 'Girl Party' (pronounced "par-tay"), where we made cupcakes, made a few necklaces with some cool beads we recently got and watched a movie. We do this when Dad works a double shift at the fire department and is gone for two days in a row.

This is the cupcake frosting part - Paige is getting very good at frosting cupcakes. She's also very talented at eating the frosting.

And who can make cupcakes with chocolate frosting without adding a few sprinkles. 

As is the case anytime there is food in the kitchen (which is pretty much all the time), at least one dog is standing guard to make sure nothing hits the floor. If you look closely at this photo, Kelsey is carefully studying the floor under Paige to be sure no sprinkles have jumped ship...

...and not far away Truckee is coming up with a plan to liberate a cupcake or two from

 the evil grips of the countertop.

Depending who you ask, there are some benefits to living in Wisconsin during the winter (having your snowblower break down after 16" of snow has fallen or having your local plow truck driver take out your mailbox are not one of them). One of the perks is having some pretty great indoor water parks nearby. Paige was off of school this week for spring break, and she and Jim headed out to a water park for a few days of water park fun.

Her weekly swimming lessons are beginning to pay off. 

Paige has never been bashful about leaping into the water.

A year ago she hated the wave pools, and now she loves them.

Jim has also introduced her to rock climbing, and she has really taken to it. There is an indoor rock climbing wall near our house and they are becoming regulars. 

This Saturday we are having P's Make A Wish 'kickoff party' at our house, I'll post photos of the party to the blog in the next few days.

No thanks, I'm on a low carb diet

I know I said I was planning on updating this blog on a weekly basis, but we got home from dinner out tonight to something we couldn't help but share. Those of you with dogs will probably find this funny. Those of you without dogs will wonder how or why we put up with this.

We have two dogs, Truckee and Kelsey. Truckee is a yellow lab, about 5 years old, and Kelsey is a golden retriever mix, about 3. They both love to eat and after our annual visit to the vet in 2010, were both put on a diet. We are glad to report Truckee has gone from 130 pounds (in 2010) to 100 pounds, right where our vet says he should be. Since losing the weight Truckee has taken to snacking on the occasional cookie, cake, gingerbread house or loaf of bread. Pretty much whatever is available.

Anyhow, we keep our bread in the Lazy Susan in our lower kitchen cabinets. On occasion we forget to close the cabinet. Which is what happened when we left the house tonight.

When we got home tonight we found these various chewed up plastic wrappers scattered on the floor of the computer room:

Here is the list:

1 bag of 8 hotdog buns

1 bag of 8 hamburger buns

1 bag of flour tortillas

1 bag of sandwich rolls

1 bag of King's Hawaiian rolls

1 bag of Thomas' English Muffins

To his credit, Truckee left this untouched:

One bag of Sara Lee bagels - when we picked it up off of the floor we saw one of the bagels had some mold on it. He may be hungry but he sure is aware of the dangers of mold.

As you can see he pretended to have no idea who could have eaten all this bread, but when I was taking his picture he refused to look at me (and he would not get within 2 feet of the Lazy Susan - I guess I wouldn't blame him, his stomach was probably not feeling great by this point).

A closer inspection of the cabinet found another casualty - a half eaten loaf of whole grain bread that was  apparently tightly wedged in the back of the cabinet. 

I can't explain why he left the bag of Thomas' bagels (in the foreground) untouched, maybe his real goal here was to add some fiber to his diet and skip the bagels.  Regardless, the joke is on him. The whole grain bread wrapper says it is "Fresh Thru December 28". Ha ha, Truckee, it was probably stale (but clearly not moldy).

If you're thinking we blame Truckee for everything and Kelsey may have had a part in this: yes, we do blame Truckee for everything but its because Kelsey was locked up safe and sound in his 6' by 12' cage in the basement while we were gone. 

We stopped locking Truckee up with Kelsey after Truckee got his paw struck in the chain link fence cage downstairs and got hung up in it. Truckee is the mastermind of the two and never liked the cage. Kelsey, on the other hand, knows that he gets a Snausage every time he goes into the cage, and begs to go there every time he walks by the basement door. 

I'm sure those of you with dogs have stories to match this one. Apart from the "I'm not allowed to tell what happened to the ham" story my Mom tells (that involves Uncle Chris), my second favorite is about her friend's Great Dane who stole a whole cooked turkey from an unknown neighbor's house (Happy Thanksgiving).

Hi everyone.  i wanted to start this blog to keep in touch with many of you i haven't talked to in some time, to share photos on a more regular basis (sorry, Mom) and also to keep you all updated on Paige's health (she is doing great).

i couldn't come up with a better name for the blog other than Spicka's World. if it works for Elmo it will work for us (today's blog entry is brought to you by the letter P and the number 10).

My other motivation for starting this blog was that we are headed to Walt Disney World in May for Paige's Make A Wish trip and i wanted to find a way to share photos and stories from the trip while we are there. The wonderful Make A Wish volunteers met with us in January and asked Paige if she could do anything, be anything or go anywhere, what it would be. i recall her first choice was to go to Megan's house (Megan lives next door, i don't know what they do when Paige visits but it must be one heck of a time). Aside from going to visit Megan, Paige wants to be a princess, meet the princesses and also be in a Disney parade, and that's what she's going to do.

As i think you all know, Paige was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, which means the entire left side of her heart doesn't function. She's had three open heart surgeries (the Norwood Procedure, the Glenn Procedure and the Fontan) over the span of about 2 years plus a few other minor surgeries. The right side of her heart has been 're-plumbed' to do all the work that should be done by the left and right sides, and it's pretty much a miracle that she lives the life of a normal 6 year old. We have many, many people to thank and are incredibly grateful to the wonderful staff at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin (only 18 minutes away if you are flooring it to get to the ER). 

Paige is now a kindergartener at Big Bend Elementary School, takes swimming lessons and gymnastics class weekly. Her teacher, Ms. Johnson, reports she sometimes talks to her neighbors too much but is good otherwise. She loves clothes and makeup and at last report wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up (that or a firefighter, working with Daddy). Maybe we can incorporate the two and she can design the next generation of turnout gear...we should look into that.

i figured before we headed to Florida i better make sure i know how update this blog (this may come as a shock to some of you but i'm somewhat technologically challenged), so i uploaded a few photos from the past few months.

Here is Paige sledding in our backyard last January with Truckee, one of our two dogs. He's a big boy (100#) and loves to play with Paige. We'll talk about Truckee a bit later. 

Grandy and Gramps came to visit us last Christmas, and Paige and Grandy made this gingerbread house.   Take a close look and see the entire thing is covered in white frosting (which was rock hard several hours later). We'll come back to the gingerbread house a bit later.

Paige turned 6 in February and had her entire kindergarten class over to Monkey Joe's for a party (a big warehouse filled with huge bouncy houses). Here she is with Kaitlynn opening some presents. 

She likes to ride Zee, our horse, when she's at the barn. Zee's no dummy, he knows that when Paige rides him he gets to walk around incredibly slowly (his favorite speed) and not work hard. Zee likes Paige and Paige likes Zee.

We had a second birthday party for the grown-ups at the house, and here she is about to blow out the candles on her cake. She's so excited she's about to explode.

Paige and Dad went to the Father Daughter Dance at school about a month ago. They had a wonderful time, Paige loves to put on fancy dresses for any occasion. 

Remember that gingerbread house that Paige and Grandy made at Christmas? Here it is after spending a few hours alone with Truckee. No, not the one in the upper right hand corner (that was a second gingerbread house). The white box on the counter (which had been the 'house') was licked clean, as was the cardboard base in the lower left hand corner.  

We had a fair amount of snow this year. Our neighbor, Chris, has a snowmobile. He and Jim took turns one Saturday afternoon to see how high they could get it off the ground going over a jump. We still have the gouge in the lawn to prove he did this. 

i wasn't home for the snowmobile launching event, and i trust Paige didn't take part in it. But she does love riding on that snowmobile (in case you're wondering, its parked in the photo, she doesn't drive it around by herself).

A few weeks ago Paige's kindergarden class put on a play called "The Three Little Pigs Blues" and she was to dress up like a rock star. The shiny black boots didn't photograph well but she looked very 'rock star like' (thank you, Becca, for the boots).

Paige received a doctor's kit for her birthday (including a pair of blue plastic glasses). Here she is after doing heart surgery on Truckee. That's his tail, behind Paige, wagging back and forth. He is a very good patient and sat very still for the surgery.  Good boy, Truckee.

 After finishing up with Truckee's surgery Paige went to work on Geri, her Godmother. This photo was taken when Paige was explaining why Geri needed multiple shots to her forehead. 

i'm going to do my best to update the blog once a week with additional photos (and if i get really motivated we may have a video or two). i've set up the blog to be private, so in order to view it you must receive an invitation of some sort. if you know of anyone else who might be interested in seeing the blog please email me at rooroo8@yahoo.com.  i only sent up the gmail account to set up this blog, i don't really check it on a regular basis.

Sorry if the lower case i's are annoying. They're annoying to me too but for some reason my keyboard had decided tonight that i can capitaliz all other keys except for the letter i. Maybe its angry i let the letter P sponsor tonight's blog entry, who knows.