Update 6/23/08

Beckham had a cardiology appointment this past Friday. This was the first time he did not have to get and EKG or an x-ray. He was only required to get an ECHO and see the doctor. The ECHO looked great and showed that Beckham's ticker is working great. Beck also has had a negative CMV test for the past three months so the doctor took him off of the Valcyte! I can't tell you what a difference this makes in his behavior. That med is really harsh on his system and he is acting like a different baby now that he is off of it. We also took him off of another med and that means that Beck is officially on only 2 meds (knock on wood)! The doctor seemed really pleased with him and even said that it would be alright for us to take him on vacation. Yeah! Now all we have stopping us from visiting Utah next month would be if he got an illness. Lets pray that he will stay healthy. I am not sure if that will be easy because Gwen woke up with a fever and congestion this morning. She is cutting her 2 year old molars...so lets hope that is the cause of her sickness.

This is Beckham's new face he makes. Again, doesn't his scar look awesome?

Beckham's Tacro (Prograf) levels have been a little harder to regulate lately. They have upped his does quite a bit. I am not sure if it is a side effect of Tacro with the combination of being off of Valcyte, but whatever it is, it has caused Beckham to be constantly hungry. He even wakes up hungry during the night (oh joy). You can imagine how hard this makes the three hour period where he cannot eat during morning and night med times. I was hoping that because of this I would see an large increase in his weight at his last appointment...but it was minimal. We will just keep hoping that he will plump up some time. Our name for him right now is "a fat boy stuck in a skinny boys body."

We pretty much have only good things to report (knock on wood again) and we have mostly been up to enjoying the beautiful summer weather. Now that the flood waters have started to recede, we have been going out a lot. Nate's brother Trevor recently visited us and we were able to go to the Omaha zoo with him. The Omaha zoo is one of the best zoos I have ever been to. If you are able to go, do. You will not be disappointed. Here are some highlights of our zoo trip.

I'll leave you all with a fun video of my kiddos.


-Kim, Nate, Gwen & Beckham

Guess who's 2??

GWEN is 2!!!

Gwen turned 2 yesterday. I can't believe that our little, feisty, sweet, little girly is 2. We celebrated her birthday with a super duper fun party with some great friends of ours here in Des Moines. We served her favorite foods: hot dogs and Caesar salad. Isn't it weird that I have a 2 year old that loves Caesar salad? What a girl.

Most of our posts or updates are about Beckham and this is fun to do one solely about our little Gwen. Here are some fun facts about her.

1. Full name: Gwenyth K Scadlock.
2. Born: June 18, 2006 and weighed 7 lbs 2 oz (she was due June 28th).
3. Favorites: Elmo, The Wiggles, shoes, her blanket, and her binki (we are really trying to break her of that. Currently she only gets a binki at night and when she steals it from Beckham).
4. Famous phrases:"What doing?," more pees (please)?, " "okay," and "bless you."
5. Dislikes: Nursery (we are hoping that changes soon...it would be really nice to go to Sunday School), sharing with Beckham (we are hoping that changes also but we are pretty sure it won't anytime soon), milk (she takes after her mom on that one) and riding in the car.

We are so glad that Gwen is ours forever. She is the sweetest and cutest daughter and the best big sister to Beckham. Her adventuresome spirit, feisty nature, and contagious laughter is the greatest gift we could ask for. While Beckham was in the hospital she was so good. She did such a good job when she stayed with our parents (whom she hardly knew because they live in Utah) while they were here to help us. She continues to do so well (most of the time) with all of Beckham's care.

Happy Birthday Gwen, we love you too much
for words.

Here are a couple of pictures from her party. Enjoy!

Gwen got a tricycle for her birthday. She loved it so much that she would not even get off of it to blow out her birthday candle. We had to bring the cake to her on the bike.


Blowing out the candles with her friends


She loved the cake...even though she does not look like it!

What the weather?

What a crazy couple of weeks we have been having here in Iowa. I hope that everyone out there is aware of the flooding (I am speaking to those out of the state...of course!) that we have been having in this state. I have been a little disappointed in the national news in the way they have shown footage of the floods because they are SOOOO much worse. Here are a couple of pictures that truly show the devastation that has happened here because of mother nature.

Downtown Des Moines

More Des Moines

Iowa City

Cedar Rapids

More Cedar Rapids

These picture only show 3 out of the hundreds of cities effected by the floods.

I have had a lot of people inquire about us (thanks for caring!) and just to let everyone know...we are fine. We live in West Des Moines and not near any rivers. I feel very fortunate to live where we do and I am grateful that we chose to buy a home here instead of near Nate's school in Des Moines.

Please pray for the people of Iowa. 83 of the 99 counties in Iowa have been considered a disaster area and billions of dollars in damage have been done. Today our church meetings were cut short so that we could volunteer our time to pass out supplies that were shipped here from the church headquarters in Salt Lake City. I felt a wave of emotion as the bishop explained how devastating the floods have been and how many people are out of their homes, and without power and clean water.

Wow...I can't believe that this has happened in the town that I call home.

-Kim

Answer & Info

I thought that I should probably answer the "where are you moving" question that I posed in my last post. The answer to that question is that we are not moving away from Des Moines....at the current moment. Nate does not graduate until December and has not yet applied to grad school. He has a list of about 8 masters programs that he will apply for but he cannot apply until he takes the GRE. He is scheduled to take that in GRE (good luck Nate!). We are selling out place because of two issues. 1 - because we have out grown it and 2 - so that we can hopefully have it sold by the time we do move (where ever that will be).

On another note...check out this blog. My friend Erica is quite the blogger and every Saturday she does a post entitled "Saturday's Someone" where she spotlights a friend. This week she chose me to spotlight. I feel so flattered. Erica is such a great friend. We had a tornado scare here in Des Moines this week and Erica and her husband made sure to call us and make sure we knew about it so that we could go and hide. Good thing they called because we did not know about the tornado warning. Thanks so much Erica.

-Kim