First and foremost, I want to thank you all for your prayers! As most of you know, my niece, Amber, was in a horrible car accident two weeks ago from today. She was in the back seat of the car with 2 other teen boys in the front. (Amber is 16) Her boyfriend was in the front passenger seat and they were trying to cross a highway. They crossed but a car was coming and T-boned them on the passenger side. Ben, Amber's boyfriend was flung to the back seat of the car on top of Amber and was killed instantly. The car was smashed pretty bad, as you can see from the picture. The passenger door was touching the driver's side door. The other boy was in critical condition (and still may be?) and for a while they didn't think he would make it because he had too much internal bleeding, but last week he started to pull through and they are hopeful now.
Amber was flown to Swedish hospital in Denver (oh, yes, she lives in Elizabeth, CO with her mom) and was in critical condition until just a few days ago. She had broken her back pretty bad, broke 4 ribs, broke her femur, got a tear in her lung and a tear in her aorta. I think that's everything, but could very well be missing something. The break in her leg was a compound fracture, where the bone sticks out of the leg. They couldn't do surgery on it until she was stable, so they had to put rods on the outside of her leg to keep it in place until they could put a rod inside.
They did back surgery immediately, which saved her from being paralyzed. Then they were going to fix her leg, but when they went into surgery, something happened with her lungs and they weren't able to fix it. Instead they had to (I believe) collapse her lung so that they were able to fix the tear in her aorta. It had apparently gotten bigger when they were hoping it would just heal itself. (I guess it was torn nearly in half by the time they got her into surgery!)
So after her heart surgery, they were able to get her stable enough to fix her leg. So I think all of her surgeries are now complete and she is awake and coherent and doing well (as well as she possibly could be, anyway!) So your prayers have been much appreciated and have been a blessing. But keep them coming as she is going to have a long road to recovery ahead of her!
This is the car Amber was in. You can see how the backseat, where Amber was is the only part not completely smashed in. Crazy. I'm sure she doesn't feel this way just yet, but what a blessing that was!
So here are some more pictures from the last couple of weeks in the Cox household! :) ........
Hannah is watching Barney and being such a loving mama! :) She loves her baby :) (and Barney!)
We went to the nursery just a few blocks from our house and they had a hay maze for the girls to go through. They had fun! Hannah made it out first and KaeLee kept calling it a cave.... haha
KaeLee trying to find her way out
Hannah follows closely behind
"Hey! There's the finish..... but how do I get over there....???" haha.
Silly KaeLee hanging out in the garage before we go on our walk.
So the next few pictures will take you on our "daily" walk. We try to take this walk every day, but as the weather gets colder, it doesn't always happen..... It also happened a lot more during harvest because Shawn wasn't home yet (we usually go after dinner). Anyway, so this is them running off! They are super good about staying on the sidewalk and KaeLee is REALLY good about stopping the moment I say stop or wait. Hannah..... not so much. I sometimes have to run a bit myself to keep up with her so that I am always in arms reach. Because even though we live on a dead end, it is WAY busier than our old street in Moxee!
This is a must for the girls. As soon as they see this coming up, they are on a dead run for it! I don't even know what this is..... an electrical box or something? But the girls love to dance on it and make it make noise! haha. It cracks them up! They say they are making music. Maybe they are future STOMP performers???? haha
This is another highlight of the walk. There is a house towards the end of "dead end" that has a little fountain with a frog that spits water out. They love to watch the frog. KaeLee is pointing out the other frog to Hannah in this picture. My girls will seriously stand there and watch this for about 10 minutes..... I hope the owners of the house don't mind.... haha.
Then, we cross the street and head back home..... where they have to pretend they are frogs themselves and HOP HOP HOP the rest of the way home! haha
But then, if Hannah sees any rocks on the side walk....
She has to put them back where they belong. This can sometimes be exhausting and I have to pry her away so we can get moving again.... haha Then we get the mail and go inside, but I didn't take a picture of that activity......
See the pile of toilet paper in the garbage?? This is what Hannah was busy doing when I just knew she was being too quiet.... argh
And she thought it was pretty funny! (PS: look at all those teeth!!) :)
KaeLee did not want her picture taken.
She was not going to look at me.....
Well, she wasn't going to look at me and smile, anyway......
HA! I got you! You can tell she is trying to keep her mouth closed....., haha! That funny girl!
We went outside and got to play in the leaves! Even though they did this last year, they must not have remembered because they acted as though they haven't seen them before.... haha!
What a silly smile! She was quite hyper here!
Hannah was so busy and having a ton of fun and it was SO hard to get a good picture of her looking at me! urgh
Throwing the leaves around! KaeLee liked kicking the leaves, but she was so wild, I didn't get any good pictures....
And then they spent a good deal of time going down the slide. Again. And again. And again.... haha
Again, she did not want to look at me for a picture!! That girl is SO stubborn! ;)
She finally gave in.... ha!
We were racing to go touch the tree first!
Good landing Hannah!
KaeLee shooting some hoops! She's getting so good at it!
My girls!
We went to smallwood farms yesterday and I took some pictures, but I haven't gotten them off my camera just yet, so you'll have to wait! And I also noticed I didn't load my Halloween pictures of the girls in their costumes. Some of you may have gotten a Halloween card with a few of those pictures.... but I will try to remember to post them with the next post.
Tonight we are painting the girls' pumpkins and carving our own. So I will just have to do a post dedicated to all things Halloween! :)
Not much else has been going on around here. I guess, since I wrote last, Shawn went to Arizona to visit his friend, Mark and his sister. The girls and I spent a couple of days in Yakima, Shawn cam back home Thursday (our 4 year anniversary!). We were happy to spend the evening at home, catching up on conversation and on our TV shows that we've had to wait to watch since he's been gone.
Shawn is going back to Yakima tomorrow for 4 days to do some work for his old boss and help my brother cut some wood. The girls and I are going down just for the day on Thursday and my mom is going to watch the girls so Shawn and I can have our "anniversary date" and go out to dinner somewhere. And maybe go to a movie.
Well, I should probably get the girls down from breakfast.....! Hannah is about ready to spread the remaining yogurt all over her hair! Ahhhhhh!! See ya!
