IPad fundraiser for Payton

Ok so we are down to the last few weeks here and I am praying that we will be able to raise a little more to help us to get the IPad for payton. Here is the link...feel free to share away! Getting this piece of technology will be a huge blessing for little Payton. Thank you all for all you have done so far! We are so blessed to have the wonderful people in our lives that care so much for our family.

The Necessary Introduction

Welcome to Our Crazy Kind of Life

That's the family (minus me since someone had to hold the camera)

So that's me!

So I guess this first post should just be an intro into our life.  First there's the kids, and there's a lot of them, Katie is 12, Robert is 10, Ian is 9, Andie is 8, and Payton is 2.  Then there's the hubby Ryan and of course me Tanya (where most of the crazy comes from) .  So this blog is going to just be a glimpse into the life that we have made and continue to work on.  We have our good days and our not so good days.  

My older kids are quite an eclectic mix....Katie is your typical preteen, 12 going on 30.  Some days I wonder how my Mom made it through with me if this is what I was like.  Robert is my little man, he has Aspergers but is very high functioning and has made leaps and bounds in his behaviors in the last 3 years.  Ian, he is at that age where the louder you are the more fun it must be and I sure hope it passes quickly.  Andie is my mini-me, she is the spitting image of her mother looks and attitude.  I can feel the many battles of who is more stubborn already beginning with her.

 Then there is my baby Payton....Payton was born June 20, 2010, after an uneventful pregnancy, 6 hours later she turned blue and was rushed away to Children's Hospital in Denver over 2 hours away.  She was diagnosed with a major heart condition and when she was 2 days old she had open heart surgery.  During this surgery Payton suffered a stroke.  After almost 5 weeks in the hospital we were finally able to take our beautiful baby girl home.  When she was almost 3 months old she started having seizures, up to 20 a day, which at the time Dr's thought were related to the brain damage that she had suffered during the stroke.  After spending lots of time in and out of Children's Hospital in Denver, months of testing and more medication then I thought that one kids could ever take, she was eventually diagnosed with Aicardi syndrome.  This is a very rare genetic disorder where the corpus callosum is missing from the brain.  This is the part of the brain that lets the right and left side talk to each other. Dr's have told us that Payton will probably never walk and will always have severe developmental delays.  We are hopeful that she will beat the odds and someday walk on her own.  She has already shown all the Dr.'s that she will write her own story, and has already done so much more than they thought that she would.  Ok so I rambled on a bit there about her story but it was a life changer for the whole family.  

I am looking forward to sharing an eclectic mix on here, from our ups and downs, to some of the other crazy things we do around here.  I am a Pinterest addict (should be some kind of 12 step program I am telling you!) so I am sure my Pinterest nailed and failed its will make it on here too.  Look to see regular posts on here...at least weekly and I look forward to seeing lots of comments from all of you too!!