Mario is doing GREAT!!

I just wanted to show you how beautifully little Mario has healed from his injury. There is a little bit of redness, but that is about it! He has one more appointment tomorrow, but it is just for them to see that is is healed. Thanks again for all your prayers!

Hannah 1 year old!

Here's my big 1 year old!

BTW: Little Mario was being really cute the other night and he asked if I could snuggle in his bed with him. I said I was too big. A couple days later he started saying, "Mom's stupid" I was getting frustrated with it, then I realized he was saying. "Mom's too big!" We got a really good laugh out of that. Thought that was a cute story to share. 

Happy Birthday Hannah!

Today, September 16th, is our little Hannah Lea's birthday. She is one year old! And what a fun year it has been and what a joy to have her in our family. She is a constant ray of sunshine in our life. Hannah, darling, we love you!

In the hospital 1 year ago

Blessing day (November 2007)

Pictures from the birthday party coming soon... BTW, the song playing (All- American Girl by Carrie Underwood) is Hannah's song!

Mario's Evil Laugh and New Pajamas

My friend Stephanie gave me some flannel that she wasn't using so I used it to make matching pajama pants for my kids. Then I went and found these white shirts to wear with them. Now they will have nice warm PJ's for Boise!

Little Mario thought he was pretty funny earlier when he was doing his evil laugh. Muahhahahaha! Just practicing for when he becomes a evil genius someday.

No Surgery

I talked to a nurse and she said that he does not need surgery. She said to just put lotion on it everyday and keep him from scratching it. We will go in for one more appointment before we leave for Boise, but he should be good, no more visits after that! We are so glad that he is healed and that it healed properly! 

ALL GONE!!

As you can see the mask came completely off this morning! I'm so glad. I'll write more when I find out if he is out of the surgery!!

Little Mario's Mask is Almost Off!

I just wanted to share my excitement! Most of the mask pealed off tonight and we were able to trim it off! He just has that one little spot on the side of his head left. From the looks of it, he may not have to get surgery after all, but we will wait and see what the doctor says. 

It was funny how it happened. He has been trying to itch it for almost a week now. So tonight when I was reading him a story he was trying to scratch it, so I helped him by scratching on top of the mask. Then as I was looking at it I saw that it had pealed up right there over his eyes I took a peek underneath it and it looked really good so I slid my finger under it and rubbed his forehead. I asked hi it that felt good and he said, "Yeah!" As I did that the glue started to pull up and he didn't object so I kept pulling gently. It came off really easily. So I trimmed it. That one side is on there really good, I don't dare touch it yet. But I hope it comes off so maybe they don't have to do surgery! I don't think he will need the skin graft because it looks so good! But once again, we will get the doctor's opinion on that. 

Thank you for all of your prayers through this. I know that Heavenly Father is blessing him to heal well. Thank you to those of you who have put Mario's name on prayer rolls, I know that having him prayer for in the temple added extra blessings! I will update after his surgery unless something before that happens!

Hannah Loves Jewelery

Hannah is so silly. She loves to wear bracelets on her legs. Her are a couple pictures of her flaunting my bracelets. Such a silly girl!

Walking and looking at the same time! 

BTW, she is walking so good now!

Little Mario's Appointment

So today little Mario had an appointment to have his face looked at and see how it is healing. After waiting for 2 hours we were finally able to see his doctor. (It took so long because the doctors come and do follow up appointments between surgeries.) They tried to take what is left of the mask off there in the clinic, but it was on too tight. They want to see how the skin underneath is healing so that they can get it to be as clean (no scarring) as much as possible. Because they couldn't get it off today they have scheduled him for surgery next Tuesday in the morning. They are going to remove what's left of the mask and assess how it is healing. If it is healing fine they will send him home with us that day. If it is not, they will remove a small patch of skin from his thigh and graft it onto his forehead. The burn on his cheeks and around his eyes is healing great, the burn on the forehead was just so much deeper they said. If they do the graft then he will have to stay the night. 

So little Mario is going to be stealing Hannah's spotlight. That day (the 16th) is her birthday. Not that she will care that much, but I feel bad that I won't be with her that day. She will spend her day with Cari Winn. LOL! We'll have to celebrate it another day. Sorry Hannah! 

This is a picture of how he is looking today:

 He is doing much better. As you can see the mask has come off of his cheeks and the skin is looking much better.  His head is really REALLY itchy! He has scratched little holes in the mask on his forehead trying to scratch it. We are giving him Benadryl to help with the itch. 

As always if you have an questions feel free to ask me, I don't mind. My house is a mess because I haven't had time to catch up, the laundry is overflowing the baskets so I better go get some housework done! I'll update again on him after the surgery.

Happy Birthday Cindy!

I was born on September 8th, 1984. I was adopted by Paul and Vicki Wolters and sealed to them when I was 6 months old. This is a picture of me when I was 3 years old. Aren't I a cutie? Ha ha ha! I'm 24 years old today. Happy Birthday to me!

How's Little Mario Doing?

I just wanted to post and say that little Mario is doing fine. He is back to a normal schedule. He is playing good and for the most part back to his fun-loving self. He still doesn't look great, not much of a change from the last picture other than his eyes are no longer swollen, which is great. Some of the mask is starting to come off and we can see the burn underneath healing. It's still really bright red. He is really sensitive to people touching his face, as is expected (I would be too). Thank you to all of the people that have been concerned and have offered help. Heavenly Father has truly blessed him. We are so grateful for that. 

Happy Anniversary!

Today Mario and I celebrate 4 years of marriage. Mario and I met on February 16th, 2004 in the singles ward in Orlando, FL. I was doing a college internship with Walt Disney World and he was staying with his parents while preparing to go into the Air Force. We dated for 2 months before he proposed. After just 5 days of knowing each other we knew we would be married someday. Mario and I were apart for 5 months seeing each other for only 3 days during that time. Mario met my parents just 2 days before the wedding. We spent the first year of marriage in Monterey, California. 

 I love you, Mariano! Thank you for being a wonderful husband and father. 

Explanation of what you are looking at

Okay, a couple people have asked me, "what the heck is on his face?!?" So I am here to explain what you are looking at. 

If I understand this correctly, they glued an antibiotic mask on him to help keep the burn and skin clean and free of infection. The aluminum foil stuff on his face is the bottom layer of the mask that they took off. The white stuff around the outside of his face is the glue. Underneath that is the fake skin. The red you see around his eyes is from where they pulled the mask off. That is what the rest of his face would look like if they pulled the whole mask off or if he picks at it (which I won't let him do). Over the next 2 weeks the mask remnants and the fake skin will start to dry out and peal off (gross, I know). By the end of 2 weeks his face should be relatively clean. Next week at his appointment they will do some scrapping to get some of that off. He should look better next week. By 2-3 weeks he should be back to normal. I know it looks really bad, but the doctors assured us that he will look like his normal beautiful self when the mask and fake skin peal off. 

So don't worry, I know it's freaky now, but he'll be fine in just a little bit! Hope that helps! Feel free to email me with any other questions. I won't be offended. It's really interesting to me to see how they deal with something like this. Is that morbid of me? LOL! 

Update on little Mario

Little Mario is doing much better today. I came home and slept last night while Daddy Mario stayed the night with little Mario. When I went up to the hospital and saw my baby boy he looked worse than the day before his eyes were almost completely swollen shut to the point where his depth-perception was messed up. This is as much as he could open them:

They let us come home from the hospital at about noon today. They ended up taking off the mask. He hasn't touched it and it doesn't seem to be bothering him. Once they took off the mask the swelling immediately started getting better. That's probably why they took it off. 

When we got home he went and played. He is acting normal. He started getting a little grumpy a little while ago so I gave him some pain medication and he is doing a lot better now. He will go back to the doctor next week for a follow-up appointment. As long as he is doing well he can go home. But if it isn't healing how they want to he will have to be admitted again to have the fake skin reapplied. We are crossing our fingers that he will pass the "test" and can come home without having to stay. This is what he looks like now about 6:00pm, swelling is going down:

That's what's going on now. I will update in a few days.

Mario's Accident

On Sunday before church little Mario was in the kitchen with Grandma (she was ironing) and me. He was hungry and reaching up on the counters to find food. I told him that I was going to make him a sandwich. I turned around to do something and the next thing I knew he had pulled a cup of hot herbal tea on his face. I immediately took him into the bathroom and sprayed him down with cold water with the help of Grandma and Grandpa. Then we wrapped him in a towel and started putting ice on his face and seeing how bad it got him. He skin was already starting to peal 2 minutes after it happened. Not knowing how bad it was we called Brother Bush (a doctor in our ward) and asked him what to do. We ended up taking Mario to his house (which is like 3 minutes away) to have him tell us what he thought, he said to take him to the ER. 

When we got to the ER they (thankfully) immediately took him back and gave him some narcotics. Then they put an IV in him and put him on fluids and put some aloe on his face to help with the burn. After about 20 minutes he calmed down and fell asleep for 45 minutes. They took me and little Mario in an ambulance (little Mario loved the ride in the "bumpy truck") to Doctor's Hospital where then have a great Burn Center. They admitted us into the hospital and got him some more drugs. The doctor came and looked at him and said that he had second degree burns and that he would need to go into surgery the next day to have the burn cleaned. Little Mario and I hung out in the room the rest of the day. I sent Daddy home to sleep since he is working nights right now and had only sleep for 3 hours before I woke him up to go with me to the ER. 

Grandpa visited and Grandma and Aunt "Jo Jo" came up and brought balloons and a couple gifts, which was really sweet. He loved it. She brought bubbles and he blew them the rest of the night! He was great and happy yesterday (Sunday). Here is a picture of him after he got burned (I know these pictures aren't great, I was using the camera on my phone):

He slept well through the night and in the morning they came and got him for surgery right as he woke up. He did well, he was in there for about 30 minutes. They clean it up well and then applied some fake skin to his forehead (that was where he got burned the worst). He woke up fine and was good. They took him back to his room and he slept for a few hours. I sent Mario home to sleep (he spent the night with Mario while I slept at home). Here is a picture of little Mario asleep with Daddy before he left:

I spent the day with little Mario. He was really groggy all day. He had a hard time eating; he threw up every little thing he ate until about 4:00pm. He would've gone home Monday, but they kept him another night because of the nausea. 

The saddest thing is that because of the scrapping they did in surgery and just the degree of the burn his eyes got really swollen and he could barely open them. This is what he looked like 10 hours after surgery. The poor kid could barely smile for me. 

Little Mario is one tough kid. We are proud of him for how cooperative and polite he was considering his age. He should come home on Tuesday. He will have to wear this cool "Batman mask" for a week until the new skin starts to grow back. At that point he will go back to the Burn Center for a follow-up where they will take off the mask and make sure it is healing properly. 

He shouldn't have any type of long term damage. He might have some discoloration for a few weeks and some light scarring, but other than that he should be good as new. We are really fortunate that it wasn't worse thnt it was. We truly are blessed by our Heavenly Father to have everything with this process go well. Mario and I are doing okay. We are just mainly worried about how much pain he is in. We are grateful that Mario's parents were visiting and were able to help out with Hannah so much while we were taking care of Mario. I may post more pictures later. In a few days click on the slideshow on the right hand side to see more. 

Thank you to those who have prayed and offered help, we truly appreciate it. Hopefully he will heal quickly and be back to his normal adorable self soon.