August 2024

I still cannot believe I’m old enough to have a middle schooler! I’m not ready for this, but Brooks sure is! We got to tour the school and walk through his schedule, meeting all of his teachers. I’m just so dang proud of him. He’s such a great kid!

Change can be scary but also so exciting!

After Brooks’ middle school orientation we headed to the lake for one last summer hoorah with the Cisneros’!

Best friends raising….

Best friends!

The Julie’s!

Sunset boat rides are my favorite!

Love my boys 💙💙

Lazy days at the lake are the best days!

Live music at Hemingways on the weekend is where it’s at!

One last sunset boat ride of the summer!

That’s right, I sure did win the 3 day long Mexican Train game we had going!

Ice cream treat with our besties before saying bye!

Back to McKinney and it’s Ellis and Shep’s turn to meet their teachers!

School started on a Thursday this year, so Tuesday was our last full day of summer, and you better believe this momma made it fun! First up was Hawaiian Waters with the boys and their friends!

I’m in my “relax in the shade and read a book while they have fun at the waterpark” era, and I’m totally here for it!

5 hours at the park and they were toast!

Next up was an evening trip to the mall with Ellis and her besties!

We ended the night with dinner and arcade games at Dave and Busters!

Wednesday (the day before the first day of school) was a chill day at home, and the day I always take our “first day of school” pics! A genius idea I came up with a few years back since none of us are morning people and the actual first day of school is always a struggle.

Brooks is our big 6th grade Middle Schooler this year that still dreams of being an MLB Player one day!

He’s officially taller than me now 😭

Love that he considers Jackson his best friend!

So thankful for a few more years of elementary school with this 3rd grade cutie who makes me laugh like no one else can.

He will definitely be taller than me by the end of this year 😭

Ellis is the big lady on campus going into 5th grade and her final year of elementary school 😭

She’s got a while before she’s taller than me…poor thing took after her mama.

This girl is a force to be reckoned with and I’m so in awe of her!

This picture was taken the next day and on the actual first day of school! You totally couldn’t tell could you?!?

We love Mrs. Stetson! She was Ellis’ all time favorite teacher!

First time with Mrs. Loya, but Ellis is absolutely loving her!

Middle school drop off was bitter sweet. So excited for Brooks but so much anxiety around the unknown too.

Took full advantage of my kid free day…starting it off strong with a morning walk with my bestie!

Then I did a little retail therapy…

….while picking up our first day of school tradition!

Ended my kid free time strong with one of my new(ish) favorite hobbies!

First day of school was a success for all 3! I have no idea what I was worried about with Brooks! He’s rocking middle school and said he loves how fast the day goes by for him!

Saturday we had to take advantage of one of the last free (non baseball) weekends we had open for a LOOOONNNGGG time! Daddy was playing in a golf tournament, so I decided to take the boys to Six Flags! Ellis opted to be lame and stay home by herself.

The kids always beg to try this ride, but it costs extra so I’ve always said no. This time I surprised them by splurging and saying yes!

They said it was awesome and their new favorite ride!

Gosh I’m so lucky to be sandwiched in between the two sweetest boys in all the world!

Lunch of champions…French fries and milk shakes!

I told myself I was going to ride ALL of the thrill rides at six flags by the end of the summer, and I’m proud to say I accomplished that goal! The straight drop Superman Tower of Power almost gave me a panic attack, but was actually not scary at all! My favorite ride was the “New” Texas Giant! I was glad I faced my fears with the boys watching! They love when I ride the rides with them, and I love that I was able to give that core memory to them!

Such a fun day!

I LOVE this kid so freaking much! Walked into the garage to find Brooks FaceTiming Jackson and playing video games like this 🤣….

Second week of school Ellis already got to play hooky for two days! Thursday we had an appointment with a Lyme specialist right outside of Austin. It’s probably time for a quick recap and update of everything going on with Ellis. My memory isn’t what it used to be, and I can’t remember what all I’ve shared, so I’ll just start from the very beginning (fair warning, buckle up)…

Ellis has always been VERY strong willed and independent from as far back as I can remember. She threw the longest and loudest fits, but I always chalked it up to her being the only girl and middle child. She was fighting for our attention since Shep was born just 18 months after her. She’s always had separation anxiety from me as well, which of course was endearing, until it wasn’t. Her fits continued past the terrible twos and threenager stage, and I was just crossing my fingers and praying for the day she’d out grow them. Unfortunately, that day never came. I thought for sure kindergarten would be a struggle, but she walked into the school like she owned the place and made a ton of friends! Sleepovers and play dates were a constant. Then came Covid at the end of kinder. First grade became a huge struggle. I of course chalked up her refusal to get out of the car in the morning to Covid and all the craziness that came with that period in our lives. We also had to put Sampson down, so I thought that might have been a contributing factor as well. Long gone were the play dates and sleepovers, unless they were at our house. She even insisted on having me inside the gym with her at gymnastics, which was highly frowned upon. I gave up the struggle and allowed her to quit gymnastics and we tried softball out for a while until that became too much. She also refused to go to birthday parties without me or any camps. I had to trick her on several occasions just to get her to go places, which I now of course regret. She developed an irrational fear of anyone throwing up in front of her and all the sudden wanted to start taking 2 to 3 showers a day. This became our new normal and things kind of got a little better for second grade. The summer after second grade though, it got REALLY bad. Ellis started having an extremely hard time controlling her anger and would lash out at me especially, but even her friends. She would go into uncontrollable rages and it was such a hard time for all of us, including her brothers. We lived our days trying not to upset Ellis. This was no long after Covid, so there were still huge waitlists for therapists. Thankfully I was able to get an appointment with a psychiatrist pretty quickly and he diagnosed Ellis with anxiety. He put her on Zoloft and this helped a little teeny bit, but she was still really hard to handle. The psychiatrist a couple of months later further diagnosed her with adhd due to the impulse control of her emotions and started her on Guanfacine. This medication made all the difference, and we finally got our Ellis back! Still her strong willed self but so much more rational. Play dates and sleepovers started up again and her irrational fears were gone! The only new symptom that arrived was her sudden onset of wetting the bed at night. I just figured it was due to the medication and was for sure willing to take this minor side effect over the behavior. After a time though her symptoms would come back, so we had to increase the dosage of Guanfacine two times, and each time things would calm down and get better. Things were pretty controlled with medication for most of third grade and even starting into fourth grade. The week before Thanksgiving break of her fourth grade year Ellis got sick with a pretty high fever for two days. She never had any other symptoms and was fever free after two days, so I just assumed it as a virus and never took her to the doctor. A few days after that, on a Saturday morning I will never forget, I discovered Ellis had “scratched” her eyebrows off. I immediately had the biggest pit in my stomach and instinctively knew something was really wrong. I’d heard about trichotillomania before and just had a gut feeling this was it. Over the Thanksgiving break she went from pulling all of her eyebrows to all of her eyelashes. To say we were sick with worry would be an understatement of the century. Adam had been listening to some podcasts and thought we should get her into to see a functional medicine doctor. We weren’t able to get an appointment until after the holidays, and by this point she moved onto pulling her scalp hair. The functional medicine doctor put her on a gluten free, dairy free diet and a bazillion supplements. None of which helped get rid of her urge to pull. I joined a facebook support group for trichotillomania where several people told me to look into P.A.N.S which stands for Pediatric Acute Neuropsychiatric Syndrome. When I looked into that I immediately knew that’s what Ellis had. She had every single symptom…anxiety, tics, emotional lability, irritability, aggression, behavioral regression (not wanting to do play dates or sleepovers anymore as well as baby talk), sleep disturbances and bedwetting, OCD, and so on and so forth. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. We told the functional medicine doctor about our concerns and she ordered a very expensive blood test called the Cunningham Panel. After the results came back it was confirmed that Ellis very likely had PANS. Unfortunately this doctor was not too familiar with PANS or how to treat it and thought we should seek out a PANS specialist. PANS is not widely researched or accepted in the medical community yet, but fortunately that it changing. Thankfully we found a local specialist here in McKinney that ran lots for tests on Ellis. In order to treat PANS you have to be 1. Genetically predisposed, which we found out through the very expensive genetic tests that Ellis is, and 2. It has to be triggered by an infection, most commonly strep, but could also be triggered by numerous other viruses and even mold. In order to treat the PANS you have to find the trigger, so this Dr. tested Ellis for all the things. Turns out Ellis has antibodies and was red flagged for all the things. She’s not actively sick with any of the viruses she was red flagged for, but because of her PANS (which is autoimmune) her body thinks she is and is attacking her brain cells. This is what is causing all of her neuropsychiatric symptoms and most likely her trich. The hardest of all the red flags to treat is Lyme. The PANS specialist recommended we see a LYME specialist who is also familiar with PANS, and there just so happens to be a specialist right outside of Austin in a little town called Burnet. All of that background takes you to the point we’re at right now. After seeing the LYME specialist in Burnet on Thursday we stayed with the Arguijo’s in Round Rock. I don’t have much of an update after seeing the Lyme specialist other than she put us on six weeks of supplement drops and then we will start two very strong antibiotics. I also have an appointment with a rheumatologist at the beginning of November to possibly have Ellis do infusion treatments where they will replace her antibodies. The hope and prayer is for these antibiotics and possible infusions to decrease her brain inflammation which will in turn reduce her neuropsychiatric symptoms. It’s not a guarantee this will work, but we are hopeful 🙏. Every time she contracts a virus though she will be susceptible to a “flare”, but at least we know what we’re dealing with now. There’s no quick fix or “cure”, but it sure feels good to finally have a name for the monster!

Friday, Ellis and I had a fun mommy/daughter day while everyone else was at school or work. We brought Jodie a soda and got to hang in her classroom for a bit!

After the middle school visit we went and got our nails done!

I think it’s safe to say Ellis has my long skinny fingers, lol

Friday night Jodie and Rickey so graciously watched all 3 of our kids while Adam and I met Julie and David in New Braunfels for the Wyatt Flores concert!

No clue what he was shushing for???

Whitewater is my most favorite venue with the Guadalupe River behind the stage!

Such a great concert!

Saturday we drove from Round Rock to Houston to celebrate Adam’s parents belated 50th Wedding Anniversary! We met and had a delicious dinner at Perry’s Steakhouse!

After dinner we went back to their house to check out all the renovations they recently had done and to eat cake and open presents!

50 years is a HUGE deal and I’m so thankful we got to celebrate with them!

❤️❤️

Lesley came up with this awesome idea to ask the grandkids these questions about Grandma and Pawpaw, and then Brooks created this super cute video with all of their answers 😍! He was so excited to share this video with them and I loved that he agreed to take this on! He’s so talented and good at everything he does!