Happy New Year!

Just want to wish everyone a happy new year! I hope you all have good luck with your resolutions, I will be trying hard as well.

Cutest bum ever!

So we have been toying with the idea of potty training George for a while now and we thought we would give it a go. It is the most madning process I have ever encountered. It felt like forever but once we got him to pee once in the big boy toilet it was pretty easy. It was the 500 times that he went in his pants before the actual toilet that about drove me crazy. I think he likes the potty prizes that we have for him more than the actual idea of going potty. We did get him some pretty nice undies, Lightning McQueen and Elmo. It has been fantastic, we are pretty much there except for sleeping at night. Oh sweet bliss!

Seriously once you get them out of the diaper they have the cutest bum's!!

On Christmas Eve we had the Fam over for sledding and Hot Cho! Ruth and George were sledding machines, they were going down by themselves!!

Ultimate Sledding!

So Spencer has been busy this last little while, not on something that is truly important but on his sledding hill. It is on the side of the house that the deer got stuck in so I guess it is good that he took down the fence that it got stuck in. We have a pretty good slope to the back of our house so Spencer decided it would make a great sledding hill. He took out the fence and there was a large maple tree in the middle of the sledding hill, that would not do so he cut it down. He has hay bails on the edges of the sledding hill so there should not be any accidents!?! He is so weird! The other night we had his family up to sled and he was out there icing it down so you could get more speed. Now many of you have seen our house and it is in need of many updates but rather than doing that he wanted to make a sledding hill for himself, he says it is for George but George does not need it iced down. Here are a few pictures of the hill.

You can see the hay bails in this picture!

So after they were done sledding they came in to warm up. George has a full body snow suit as seen above. Now I know many of you have seen A Christmas Story. Remember the scene when his little brother gets pushed down and can not get up. That is George in the picture above. He is laying on the ground screaming "I can't do dis!" All we could do is laugh and grab the camera. He would try to stand up but his boots were wet and they kept slipping out from under him.
Spencers old Stake does a live nativity in SLC. We went to it and got this great picture with one of the guards to Bethlehem. They had all sorts of animals the best is the camel, whenever you ask George what the camel says he makes a burping sound, that is really what they sound like too. He loved it.
Scarlet was in the best mood the other morning and I got some good pictures of her and I thought she gets a little shafted on the picts so here are a few!

George's article!

So I was contacted by the American Heart Association a while ago and I have volunteered here and there for them. The called me the other day and they wanted to write an article about his survivor story. They just sent me the link and I thougth you all might find it interesting.

http://www.heart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3052000

The link has pictures but here is the article from the site...

The future is bright for tiny transplant veteran

The holidays will be especially bright this year for George Little and his family. He lives in Bountiful, a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah, with his parents Ashlie and Spencer Little. They have lots to celebrate.
George is two-and-a-half years old and thriving after a heart transplant saved his life. His baby sister Scarlet was born two months ago.
“He is a normal two-and-a-half-year old,” says Ashlie. She and Spencer weren’t sure they would ever be able to say that. And that's why the Littles are active volunteers and advocates for the American Heart Association.
They first learned the son they were expecting would be born with a congenital heart defect at Ashlie’s 20-week ultrasound. George was born Feb. 22, 2005, with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, a condition in which the left side of the heart is underdeveloped. “Doctors explained a series of three surgeries could buy him time for a transplant because he could not live on half a heart his whole life,” Ashlie explains. He had his first surgery when he was only three days old, recovered quickly and was home in a couple weeks. The second surgery was performed when he was about three-and-a-half months old and this time he recovered in five days.
“He was doing so well we were sure he had a very strong heart," Ashlie says. “We were hospital-free for about five months -- it was wonderful.”
But right before Christmas of 2005 George caught a cold that would not go away. His condition worsened and after many tests doctors concluded he was in severe heart failure. His parents were told he was functioning on a fourth of a heart and needed to be listed for a heart transplant. The waiting began.
Weeks went by and then a transplant seemed almost impossible because George contracted respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) which causes infection of the lungs and breathing passages. “It usually takes six weeks to clear,” Ashlie notes, “but he did not have that much time. George fought it off in two weeks and was put back on the transplant list.”
“Doctors were surprised to see such a sick boy fight RSV so quickly,” Ashlie adds. “Once he was re-listed we still had our good and bad days, but the best came on Sunday, March 12, 2006. We were told that there was a heart available in Kansas City. We are so grateful to that family. They were so selfless in their decision.”
George was taken into surgery that evening. “We had hourly updates during the surgery,” Ashlie notes, “and the best update was when was the heart was in and pumping on its own. The great miracle this donor family gave us was possible because of research funded by the American Heart Association. We are so grateful for the research that enabled George’s life to continue here with us.”
George was able to go home in four weeks after the transplant with therapy and lots of medications. His health began to steadily improve. Last summer a respiratory problem developed which turned out to be asthma. The Littles have it under control.
Because of their experience Ashlie and Spencer became involved with the Western States Affiliate’s Utah Division. Most recently they joined the fun at the Start! Utah Heart Walk and Ashlie is active in advocacy efforts. She spoke at the Affiliate’s Lobby Day at the State Capitol in Salt Lake City last February. She also traveled to Washington, D.C. with George and his grandmother, Nancy Reese, for national Lobby Day on April 24 to lobby national lawmakers on issues critical to the fight against heart disease and stroke.
“We are dedicated to this fight,” Ashlie concludes. “We are able to celebrate George’s birthday on Feb. 22 each year, along with his ‘heart birthday’ on March 12, thanks to the American Heart Association."

Livin' in the Mountains!

Wow so around this time of year time does fly!! We were able to host for Thanksgiving this year it was great. Although a few days before thanksgiving we had an incident. With how high we are on the Mountain we have a lot of deer in our yard. I was on my way home from a baby shower and Spencer called asking where the camera was. He then told me that we had a deer stuck in our fence. I hurried home to see it and this is what I saw. The blood is just from the deer trying to run while its legs were stuck, the rooftop was rough.


It was very weird the way it was stuck, its hind legs were in the back fence and it was on top of our neighbors shed. Spencer tried to get it loose for a while then we decided we needed to call Animal Control. They were not able to come so they sent a cop. Spencer and the cop were able to get the deer out but when the deer started to walk we noticed that both front legs were broken, not the back legs that were stuck but the front legs. That confused us even more on how it got stuck. The cop told us he would have to put it down. That is when I ran inside, I did not want anything to do with that. The deer wandered into our backyard and that is where it happened. I was talking to my mom on the phone and she heard the shot over the phone. It was very disturbing. Well Animal Control takes care of live animal problems first so it took them 3 days to come and pick up the deer. Luckily we have a slope to our yard and we did not have to look at it every day. All we told George is that we let the deer go home to its mom and dad.

We had Thanksgiving at our house this year and I got George and Sam, his cousin, a gingerbread house to decorate. They loved it. You know how it goes put a candy on the house here and eat one there. What a great activity for them, George sees in on the table and says Georgie's house. I guess that would be his ideal place to live!!

Treadmill Warning!!!

We had a little accident this last week. It was quite traumatic and it has taken me this long to be able to post this incident. I was walking on our treadmill and George was playing with his ball. The ball got sucked under the treadmill and so was George's arm. He is fine but he has some serious road rash all up and down his arm. We are very lucky that that is all that happened, many have lost limbs!! So just a warning to all of you with treadmills, don't let your kids play on them or play while you are on them, they are dangerous.

Scarlet's Day

So we were able to bless Scarlet on Sunday. It was a wonderful blessing and then we had the family over for dinner. I think the second best part of having her blessed was that my half wall was finished. It looks so good and everyone was able to come over and see our handy work. George has loved his baby sister, one of his favorite things is to sit on top of her and call out "Giddy up Horsey" Not much you can do but get him off of her and just laugh!!