2019 Year in Review

Merry Christmas!! Here is a summary of our year. 

We continued to settle into our new house and do lots of improvement projects, such as laying new tile throughout almost the whole house. We, of course, did this ourselves. And thanks to good advice from Guy (Marilee's Dad), it turned out nice. 

Our stake (larger Church geographic area) formed a new ward (single congregation) that we are in the boundaries for. So that has been fun to help build an entirely new ward from scratch and help support the efforts and callings that needed to be filled. We didn't do much to help, but it was cool to be a part of it! We really love the medical community and our respite providers. 

Eli's Birthday

Evan's Wiggle Theme Birthday - The car was built by Christina Hernandez and her husband!

 

Nancy Jacques painted these portraits for the kids as a gift to hospice patients. She is amazing.

Evan is half way through 2nd grade and still enjoying school. He gets to sleep in each morning and come an hour or two late for school and then ride the bus home. He is very happy and loving. He can still eat a little bit of food by mouth, but that is getting much harder for him now. The bulk of his nutrition comes through the feeding tube. Overall, he is doing very well. He is so fun! 

Loves his school friends!

Eli stays home with mom as he has for the past few years and enjoys his regular visitors and daily care. He responds to music, being read to and cuddled with. He is overall staying healthy, but continues to struggle with GM1 progression. His body just doesn't work in many ways like it used to. We take good care of him and continue to enjoy him every day. He probably sees angels on a daily basis, who knows! He is such a sweet boy. 

Often very sleepy during the day

Jan 2019

Laya is in 7th grade now and really enjoying her small community school. She enjoys helping out at all the events at school. She loves to listen to music, read Rick Riordan books, keep a messy room :) and she loves her dogs! She was involved in theater and two musicals this last year along with Centerstage Singers (the youth singing group Marilee directs). She is a blast!

She's just a little crazy 

Centerstage performance at the fair - April 2019

 June 2019 Creative Dramatics performance, Laya was the "director" 

Always creating something 

 Visiting Great Grandma Rae on her trip to Utah

  So much fun in the pool!

 On a hike with Dad

"A Ghost Tale for Mr. Dickens" Magic Tree House Collection

Laya was a main character "Annie" for the first half of the musical.

Laya singing a solo at the Zoo Lights Centerstage Performance

Marilee is very pregnant right now! She is due on January 9th. Stay tuned and she'll email & post some pictures when the baby comes. She is definitely feeling a bit older this time around, but has had a very healthy pregnancy. She has really enjoyed diving more into composing and arranging music this year and posting on Marileekaymusic.com

Halloween 2019

Writing music

 U of A football game

Brad has been diligent at work, traveling more often than before and also working on projects around the house on the weekends. He enjoys learning more about photography and videography as he's been helping Marilee with her music projects. He loves to chat with Laya, watch movies with the family, take the dogs for walks and cuddle with the boys. 

  Brad was nominated again to be an engineer with "Honors" so here we are at awards night. 

Photography

We are grateful for this beautiful time of year to celebrate Jesus Christ and wish you all peace and joy. 

💗The Leishmans

Evan's G-Tube Surgery

 We decided to go ahead and get Evan a G-tube so we can supplement his diet and water. He had this surgery done two weeks ago today. A gastrostomy tube is a tube inserted through the abdomen that delivers nutrition directly to the stomach. Evan had the laparascopic technique which is done by making an incision near the belly button, inserting a tiny telescope so the surgeon can see the stomach and organs and then placing the G-tube a few inches above the belly button. 

 

Evan can still eat pretty well by mouth, but has begun to lose some weight. We've also noticed some swallowing difficulties beginning to occur and wanted to get the tube inserted before he really struggles. The month or two before Eli got his placed were very difficult for him and he lost a bunch of weight in that short period of time. He was often crying at every meal. We didn't want Evan to have to go through that. 

Evan was very sad that day and the day after. He was either crying or sleeping for the first two days. On the third day, he was better, but continued to cry frequently from the pain. 

 Brad, Laya, Jasmine and Eli all came to visit the evening of the surgery. Evan and I spent the night in the hospital one night and then went home the next day. We were excited to go home! We both didn't get much sleep the night before.  

Evan is doing well now, two weeks later. The skin is still red and swollen around the site and it's not quite healed up yet, but it's almost there. We have some good supplies to keep it clean and hopefully speed up the healing process. Evan will see the doctor early next week to follow up. We are so grateful for this technology and the good surgeon who did the work. Eli has lived much longer than he would have because of it and I'm sure this will help Evan be stable and thrive these next few years as well. 

Have a great day!