The end of an era

Joshua has seen Dr. Wiggins at least every 6 months since he was born.  For the first couple of years we saw him more like every other month.  I am so grateful for Dr. Wiggins and his peaceful and caring manner.  It has been an amazing experience to work with him and his staff. 

When I called in September to schedule Joshua's appointment in October I heard the words I have worried about since starting this heart journey.  "Dr. Wiggins is not coming to outreach clinics anymore, he is working towards retirement."  He has hired someone else to take over for him.  I decided to go to Billings to see Dr. Wiggins one last time instead of going to Cody and see Dr. Lashus.  Evee George was taking her daughter, Brinlee, up so I scheduled Joshua's appointment at the same time so we could go up together.  We enjoyed the day, it was fun to listen to Joshua and Brinlee in the back seat.  They had a great time talking together.

I love Dr. Wiggins nurse, Melissa, as much as I love Dr. Wiggins.  Melissa is also leaving in May. She has been going to school to be a nurse practitioner.  I have always thought that Melissa has an amazing ability with children.  She loves to talk to them and makes them feel so comfortable.  I have always thought if she wasn't a pediatric nurse she should be a children's photographer.  She is so good at getting them to smile.  I wanted to get a picture of Joshua with Melissa, but she avoids cameras.  I did get a picture of her on the floor with Joshua while he was picking out stickers for doing so well.

Joshua had a great report at this visit.  Six months ago Dr. Wiggins didn't like the rhythm of Joshua's heart so he had to wear a holter monitor for 24 hours to monitor his heart.  Everything looked good this time.  Joshua's oxygenation was better this time also.  He fenestration from his Fontan surgery is starting to close up on its own.  That helps him have more oxygen.

It has been a tender mercy to have a pediatric cardiologist so close and I am grateful that Dr. Lashus will be here now.

Melissa always calls Joshua sticker man when he has his EKG

Brinlee, Joshua and Dr. Wiggins

Melissa letting Joshua and Brinlee bring a bunch of stickers home

That's a new PR

Right now as I am typing Matthew is in Star Valley running the Conference Cross Country meet.  I so hope he is doing well and is happy with his time today.

Last week the meet was here in Powell, it was the last meet of the season I will get to watch. The meet was at the Powell golf course.  The younger children had fun playing in our fall leaves before the race started.  Matthew ran so well.  His goal this year was to break 20:00 minutes.  He hadn't been met his goal yet.  Running at Powell he ran a 19:09.  He took almost a minute of his personal record.  Way to go Matthew!  I love watching you run!!

playing in the fall leaves with friends

Matthew's first mile

Come on Matthew you can catch him

Matthew and Ben in stride together

Still running strong

The final stretch, keep going Matthew

Who says Waite children can't dance?

Saturday afternoon some of the kids played Just Dance 4 on the Wii.  I love watching them do this together.  Joshua really wanted to win, but didn't want to dance so David stepped in and tried to win for Josh.   I think it is great that they like to this together and aren't afraid to dance.

Conference Weekend

For Neil's birthday I thought it would be fun to give him a trip.  We talked about it and decided to get tickets to the BYU/Utah State game on Friday, October 3 in Provo.  It was the perfect weekend to be in Utah because we also got tickets to the Saturday Morning General Conference Session and to closing night of the musical Rebecca is in Camelot.  I have been looking forward to this trip and all the events.

We left about 8:00 Friday morning on our adventure.  We stopped in Thermopolis at the Hot Springs State Park and had a soak in the mineral pools.  After that we stopped in Shosoni for lunch at Fullmer's Fat Boy.  What a fun place.  I think my mom and dad should stop there on one of their trips to Powell because it is the kind of place my dad would love.  They had great hamburgers, fries and shakes.  It is a small place, but a great one to stop at.

We drove on to Utah and went to the temple.  The temple was very busy before conference.  Neil got in to do initiatory, but there were too many sisters ahead of me.   We drove on to Cougar Stadium.  It took us longer than we planned and we were just getting there at kickoff.  We still had to park and walk/jog to the Stadium.

I love being at Cougar Stadium!  It was so neat to be there again.  I enjoyed seeing LaVell Edwards and Jim MacMahon.  They were retiring his number that night.  We lost the game 35-20, but it was still an amazing experience to be there.  My favorite play of the game was on special teams.  BYU kicked off and about 5 BYU player picked up the return man for Utah State and carrried him back about 10 yards.  He fumbled the ball, but the referees called him down by forward progression.  It was a unique play. The game got over about midnight and by the time we drove to our motel it was about 2:00 am.

We met Rebecca Saturday morning and went to the Conference Center together.  I love being at Conference.  It was so neat to watch President Monson walk in.  I am so grateful we have a Prophet on the earth today.  It was neat to listen to Elder Wong speak Cantonese. We only had my kindle to take a picture with so here are a couple of selfie pictures of us at the Conference Center.

After Conference we went to Pizza Hut and bought lunch with Rebecca.  Neil and I watched the afternoon session in our room.  Then we went shopping and drove out to Magna to watch Rebecca in Camelot.

The cast of Camelot did a great job! It was fun to watch Rebecca and think about how far she has come in her dream on being on stage.  I remember when being in MCT was the most exciting thing of the year.  She has definitely outgrown MCT.  You can just tell how much she loves to be on the stage.  My favorite part was that after she had died she kept singing.  It was cute.

We enjoyed meeting some of Rebecca's friends from Camelot after the show.  It was late and luckily there was Mexican restaurant right by our motel that stayed open all night.  We grabbed some dinner and took it back to our motel.  Our sleeping and eating schedules sure got messed up on this trip, but it was so worth it!

We left about 8:00 Sunday morning to drive home.  We wanted to get home about 4:00 so the children wouldn't have too much time after conference without us there.  We were able to listen to both sessions of conference on the radio while we drove home.  It was harder to take notes and I definitely need to read the talks again.

It was a wonderful weekend getaway!  I enjoyed every part of the weekend and I'm already thinking of what we can do some other time.  Maybe we need to make a BYU game and annual tradition.