A Post a Day in May – Page 3

Riding For Isabel

The Courage Classic is a bike tour to help raise money for the Children's Hospital Colorado starting July 16th and lasting till the 21st.

The Courage Classic is a bike tour to help raise money for the Children’s Hospital Colorado starting July 16th and lasting till the 21st.

When we were at Isabel’s Cath last week, we had one of the nurses talk to use about the Heart Institute’s team, Cardiac Climbers. They have been riding in the Courage Classic for 11 years and have raised almost $700,000. All the money the team raises goes directly back to the Heart Institute for new equipment, education, research and family assistance. The team consists of cardiac parents, members of the community along with many of the Heart Institute employees including doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, echo technicians, surgeons and support staff. Each rider dedicates their ride to a cardiac patient.

This year one of the Cardiac Climbers will be riding for Isabel. We need to get them a little more information and then I will post how to support the team and Isabel’s rider. I was amazed at all of the resources that we had available to us while we were in the hospital and I am sure some of those were because of the Cardiac Climbers. Go check out the links above to learn more about the team and the Courage Classic.

Go like the Cardiac Climbers on Facebook to show your support and help spread the word about the Courage Classic.

New Toy!

I have always wanted a nice camera. Something that is easy enough to use as a beginner but yet advanced enough to take professional quality photos once I learn how to take advantage of all the features.

Crested Butte is a beautiful town. The winters are long and full of all the snow sports you can possibly think of but the reason we moved here was for the summers. They are amazing and my iPhone camera just doesn’t do the mountains and wildlife justice. I also have a few Kindred Web Consulting customers that need some good product images taken and an iPhone just doesn’t give enough detail. I finally pulled the trigger and got a Canon Rebel T5i. Jen and I took the new camera on our family walk yesterday evening. I haven’t even learned how to use it yet and it takes amazing photos. Needless to say the images are going to get a little more clear on here as well. I think I am going to start a little photo a day section just start teaching myself how to use the camera.

Photo credit for the header image goes to Jen. She had only been playing with the camera for a few minutes and the dog scared up 2 ducks. I wish she would have been duck hunting with me a few times based on how quickly she was able to get that shot off!

If you know any photography guru’s or are one yourself, I would love some tips and resources that might help me learn how to take advantage of my new toy. Thank You!

Work Emergency?

I realized something this weekend during our trip to Denver. I work way more than I have to right now. In the past I have put in anywhere from 50 to 70 hour weeks for my day job and then come home only to start working on my night job.

I have always been a very hard working person. I would bust my butt to get something done and sometimes, more often than not, that would mean I would bring my work home with me. My dad was a hard worker and I am sure I get it from him. I have always wondered if he ever regrets not being around more when we were little. Don’t get me wrong, he was there for every little league game and would drop everything to help with a question or just just play a game of poker before bed. He just spent a lot of time traveling and for some reason I just don’t remember him being around a lot on a normal day.

My lack of attention at home was especially bad when I had my office setup at home. I would work through lunch because I could and then not end up not shutting down until well after the work day was actually over. I decided a few weeks ago to stop using my home office and start working from our real office again. I also started setting an alarm telling me when it is time to start finding a stoping point for lunch time and then another alarm to start closing down for the day. It has been amazing how I haven’t lost any of my normal productivity and yet have been able to start spending more time with my wife and the girls. It feels like I have just cut out a lot of the nonsense and now I have freed up the time to get everything done.

I haven’t been able to completely remove myself from bringing work home but instead of jumping immediately at every issue I wait just a few minutes to see if it is really an emergency and then handle it accordingly. Most of the time it can wait until I am back at the office in the morning. I guess the moral of this post would have to be; by changing my definition of an emergency, I have been able to not take work home as often and spend more time with my wife and kids. Still not as much as I would like but I am getting closer!

Recuperating from Surgery

I was amazed at how much it seemed like she wasn’t in much pain. One of the nurses told me that the little babies tend to bounce back really quickly. My 2 week old daughter had open heart surgery and all she needed was a little bit of pain medicine few days.

Getting back onto the story of Isabel’s birth. If you missed any of the previous posts you can check them out here:

A few days after the surgery, we were able to start holding Isabel again. Her heart block was still hanging around and the doctors and nurses where having a little trouble figuring out exactly what was going on. By the fifth day after surgery her heart beat was getting back to normal and the sixth day after the surgery they went ahead and removed the chest tubes and the pacemaker wires. It was nice to not have to worry about her possibly having to get an internal pacemaker and it was great to not have as many wires hooked up to her.

The next big milestone for Isabel is to get back to the amount she was eating before the surgery. She went for a few days getting all her nutrition from an IV and it is going to take a little bit of time before she is taking everything by mouth again. We had been working on it but it was going very slowly.

Once we knew that Isabel was in the clear after the surgery Jen and I decide that I should head back to Crested Butte. My parents would be coming into town in a few days and Jen’s mom had been watching Addison for over 2 weeks by herself. I was looking forward to getting back home to spend some time with Addison and have a night or two of sleep in my bed again.

Let’s Go To The Zoo – Pictures

We made it home to Crested Butte safely and now it is time to catch up on some sleep. Hope you enjoy the Zoo pictures. Tomorrow I will be getting back to Isabel’s Birth Series.

One of my favorite movie quotes of all time is in Jerry Maguire when the little boy asks to go to the Zoo. I can’t even talk about the Zoo without thinking about it. Well the good thing is that the Denver Zoo wasn’t closed today.

We made it home to Crested Butte safely and now it is time to catch up on some sleep. Hope you enjoy the Zoo pictures. Tomorrow I will be getting back to Isabel’s Birth Series.