Wow! Has it been this long??? Since I have written last, Mike and I and my parents, my siblings and their spouses all went on a cruise to Bermuda. It was beautiful!!! The beach was fabulous!!!! Swimming in the ocean was wonderful and I'm not usually a fan of the ocean. Loved it!!!! Had some really good meal times with the fam and had some good laughs...made some memories...especially taking pictures in our red outfits. I would tell you but you would probably have to be there to think it was funny. : ) We took no children and that was very nice. I would have been too concerned of them jumping overboard and instead of 20 people telling me I had my hands full, I would have had 3,500 people telling me that. Mike's parents and my cousin, Jennifer and her daughters, Lauren and Renee, watched them the kids. I think they had a pretty good time too.

We started speech therapy last week with Emma. We still don't know if she has any hearing loss. We have a sedated hearing exam scheduled for the end of this month so that will tell us if she needs any amplification with her therapy. Olivia goes to the ENT tomorrow to get a CTscan scheduled to see if she has any cholesteatomas in her ears/head. Emma's 1st surgery is scheduled for July 8th. It will take 4 hours. She should be starting physical therapy soon but I'm still waiting to get that set up.

Alyssa has her heart appointment scheduled mid-July - x-ray and echocardiogram. I am always anxious to hear how her heart is doing. I think her energy runs out faster and she needs to catch her breath more often but she still has enough energy that other people don't see what I see. Her heart is enlarged which is crowding her lungs which would make it a little harder to breathe. Last year she would run around the block with me (1/2 mile) and run most of it. Now she runs about 20 feet, bends over, catches her breathe and then will either run or walk a little more and repeat it. Last year she would walk but never bend over. So we'll see...I always get anxious because I know I will dread the day that he says it is time to do open heart surgery to replace her pulmonary valve.

Emma has really come out of her shell and taken off now that she can hear (since her surgery in late February). She is babbling a lot! She is up to about 4 words. She is delayed about 54%. Most of that is because of the thick fluid that has kept her from hearing for almost 2 years of her life. I think she will continue to take off and improve just with time. What better therapy than having 3 sisters who don't ever stop talking. : )

Well, I'm going to post some pictures. Enjoy!