Since I didn't blog as often as I wanted to in 2012, I thought a 'year in review' post would be a good time to share what we were up to! *Warning: this post contains a ton of pics!*

January -

• We traveled to the big city via ferry for countless doc appointments at the children's hospital. (Actually, we did this every 3 months during the year.)
• We celebrated four years of marriage!
• Jeremy hiked Mt. Walker for PT with his unit. This is a photo he took at the summit:
• Joel got to play in snow for the first time ever!
• Joel got his first hair cut!

February -

• We celebrated Joel turning ONE!
• We celebrated Valentine's Day
• Joel started walking!!

March -

• We played the lotto and won $2.00! Ha!
• Joel started early intervention classes
• We went to the Seattle Aquarium

 



April -

• Joel met the Easter Bunny for the first time at a school party
• Joel and I went to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium with my friend and her daughter.

May -

• We went to a festival at Ft. Lewis

• We celebrated Jeremy's birthday!
• Joel rode a pony for the first time at farm day with his EI school
• We wore blue for TSC Global Awareness Day!

June -

• We played outside a lot, enjoying the summer sunshine!
• Joel and I went on our first trip to Mississippi sans Jeremy

July -

• We celebrated the 4th of July at our favorite park
• We went to the Olympic Game Farm
• We picked blueberries
• Jeremy climbed Mt. Adams. Here is a pic of him at the summit (12276 feet above sea level) wearing a Father's Day shirt that Joel made for him :)
• We participated in our first Step Forward to Cure TSC walkathon!

August -

• At the end of August we traveled to MA to visit with Jeremy's family. During that trip we:
• went swimming + played outside every single day

•  Toured a firehouse that Jeremy's cousin works at

•  Spent a day playing at a farm

September -

• We celebrated my birthday while spending a day in Boston
• We made a pit stop at Niagara Falls during a road trip to Ohio [with Jer's mom]. It was freezing, pouring down rain, and so windy that I thought I was going to fly over the rail.. but hey.. at least we can say we've seen it! haha

October -

• We took Joel to a pumpkin patch.
• We went trick or treating at the mall due to rain.

November -

• We celebrated Thanksgiving with friends.
• We took a trip to Forks and La Push, WA. La Push was AMAZING. The pictures definitely don't do it justice! The waves were huge!! And everything was just beautiful!

December -

• We played in snow!
• We celebrated Christmas, and had fun opening gifts!

A Long Overdue Update On Joel's Health

The last time I blogged about Joel's health was back in April.. so I guess it's time for an update..

We saw the cardiologist again in the summer. Joel hasn't any issues with his heart (praise God!), and the rhabdomyomas have actually DECREASED in size which is awesome news! We are praying the rhabdomyomas will go away completely as Joel grows. The cardiologist wants to see Joel again in a year.

We continue to see the neurologist every 3-6 months. We actually just saw her in November before Thanksgiving because Joel had an MRI of his brain. Everything looked great--meaning, none of the tumors have increased in size and none were blocking fluid. We had a clinic appointment with the neurologist following the MRI and we were finally able to see images. (We were never shown images after his first MRI.) He has tumors all over his brain but most are on the left side, in areas that the neurologists think causes him to have the seizures. We asked for an exact number of how many tumors are on his brain but the neurologist didn't have the notes from the radiologist yet.

{Before his MRI.. giving Oso hugs}

He was seizure free for a year which was/is awesome! Unfortunately after hitting the one year mark he started having seizures [that came in the form of staring spells] so the dose of his seizure medicine was increased. He hasn't had any seizures (that we've noticed) since, though! According to his doctors all we can do is keep up with his weight and increase his seizure medicine as needed.. and that makes this mama super nervous. :-\

We met with a geneticist a few months ago. He suggested genetic testing for all three of us. Joel had his testing first and the results came back showing a TSC1 mutation. The testing basically just confirms that Joel does have TS, but it will also help with our testing because now they know what to look for. Doctors have told us that people with the TSC1 mutation usually have a mild case of TS, which is good, but obviously everyone is different and they can't say for sure what Joel will experience as he gets older. So far Joel has been doing very well though, and we're all are very hopeful that it will continue this way.

{We are still waiting on the genetic testing results for Jeremy and I. We will hopefully find out soon. Whether we try to have another child in the future depends on those results..}