Curve balls

Yes, life has thrown us some curve balls this past couple of weeks. My goal is to finish with

Taylor's birthday party pics and then get you updated on our trip to Cincinnati and what

we found out about Taylor's bowel situation.

Here are the fun pics from her 4th birthday party...what a great way to end her birthday week.

Taylor had a Little Mermaid "Under the Sea" party - so she had to have her picture taken with Ariel!

Our good friend Addy at the party - isn't she so cute! Wish I would have gotten a picture of the girls together.

Taylor and Ellie
One of Taylor's favorite gifts - a Little Mermaid nightgown from Carolyn, Charlene and Chuck. If it is clean...she has it on!

Taylor's best friend Kelsey - this is another favorite gift....I think we have watched it about 40 times already...

Our sweet birthday girl.
Blowing out the candles! She did a great job!
Taylor and her buddy Clayton.
Bryce hanging out and watching all of the birthday chaos! :)
A great way to end the day....Bryce reading Taylor a bedtime story (or at least trying)...I just LOVE this picture!

Okay, now onto the not so fun stuff. We just returned from spending the week in Cincinnati having tests and meeting with the Colorectal Team. The good news is she is finally cleaned out on a daily basis, but it has taken 8-9 squares of ex-lax a day and 4 T of pectin. Obviously this is not acceptable, so she is a prime candidate for a surgery to re-section her colon. After having daily x-rays and seeing exactly how her bowels move...they know what section is causing the trouble. They will remove this area (about 15% of her colon) and reconnect it. This new area of colon will have to be "retrained" to learn how to move stool through her. She will be on TPN (a liquid nutrition that she will receive thru a PICC line) for about 5 days and then they will start slowing introducing foods to see how her body tolerates it.

She will be admitted next Wednesday for pre-op and the surgery will be Thursday. They expect us to be in approximately 7 to 10 days just depending on how everything goes. The top Colorectal Doctor in the WORLD will be performing her surgery. People fly in from every where for this man to treat their children and doctors come from many countries to study under him. We are so thankful to live only 3 hours away from such awesome medical care.

Please join us in prayer that all of the details will come together - especially making arrangements for Bryce while Daddy is at work. Neal will come down the day of the surgery and a couple of other days, but he will need to work the rest of the time. This will be a very difficult time for everyone in our family. Being apart will be hard all the way around.

I believe I will have computer access at the hospital, so I will do my best to update the blog and my facebook page often.

Thanks for your prayers.

More later...