We arrived...finally!

We've had a crazy few weeks. Since I came back from Florida, we have been working like crazy to get things ready for the move to Dominica. No...it's not the Dominican Republic. It's the Commonwealth of Dominica, an island in the Caribbean! We had so much to do to get ready: immigration paperwork, packing our suitcases, packing the rest of our house up and moving it into a storage unit, trying to sell our house, Christmas, medical exams, vaccinations, blood tests, arranging flights, filling out endless forms, etc., etc., etc. But we managed to get most of what we needed to get done finished in time. My brother and his family invited us to come down to his house for dinner on Christmas Eve. We were all so excited because we knew it would be the last time we would be able to see and be with our family before the move. The kids had all been fighting colds, and Aiden had started with a fever and coughing the day before we went to Price. We had called our pediatrician's office, but our doctor wasn't the doctor on call for the weekend clinic. The nurse at the clinic said to just give Aiden some Motrin and watch him, so we did. On Christmas Eve, we drove to Price and were hanging out at my parents house before going to dinner at my brother's house. About an hour before we were scheduled to be at the dinner, Aiden came down with a high fever, was coughing like crazy, and was lethargic and struggling. Amaraa felt like he neeeded to go to the hospital, so we took him to Castleview Hospital in Price. Luckily, our family friend, Dr. Engar, was on at the emergency room that night. They gave him a breathing treatment and did a chest x-ray and blood tests. The tests showed that he had RSV.
In previous years, we had been able to get our insurance to pay for the RSV antibody injections, but RSV is usually only a problem until children are about two and a half years old. Our insurance fought our doctors last year on the RSV antibody injections, but we ended up getting them to pay for it then. This year, it wasn't even a possibility.
Anyway, Dr. Engar told us that Aiden needed to be admitted to the hospital and asked us at which hospital we wanted him admitted. We told him we would take him up to UVRMC since it is closer to home, and since they know Aiden's medical history best there. As they were preparing him to go, they checked his blood-oxygen saturations, and they had dropped below 90%. They no longer felt comfortable with having us take Aiden to UVRMC in our car since we had not brought our oxygen tanks with us. Instead, they called the ambulance to take him up and we followed in the car. While we were waiting for the ambulance, I quickly ran to my brother's house and gathered up our other two kids. We had totally missed the wonderful dinner, but they quickly prepared some plates for us to take with us and we loaded into the car. We rushed back to the hospital and made it just before the ambulance arrived. Aiden was such a trooper! He went all the way to Provo in the ambulance by himself and we followed along in the car. He watched a movie all the way and, according to the EMTs, didn't even complain or cry.
At UVRMC, they evaluated him and ranked him a 10 out of 10 on a respiratory condition scale. They gave him breathing treatments through the night and he really turned around quick -- so quickly in fact that they ranked him at a 1 out of 10 by 6:00 AM Christmas morning. The doctors and nurses had never seen someone turn around that quickly and were calling it a "Christmas miracle."

The kids had already expected that Christmas would be a little odd this year. Because of the move, we didn't decorate for Christmas or put our tree up. We also told the kids that we had arranged for Santa Claus to send us their Christmas gifts early so we could have a little more flexibility on when we would do things. So they already knew not to expect the normal Christmas spread on Christmas morning. When Aiden was put into the hospital, we were glad we had already prepared him for a "different" Christmas. I (Ben) am usually the one who does most of the Christmas stuff, and I was staying in the hospital with Aiden. Santa visited Aiden and the other kids in the hospital with a few gifts on Christmas morning, but Skylar and Jasmine didn't get to have their Christmas until later that night. Aiden was doing so well that they discharged him on Christmas afternoon, so we went home, got the presents ready for all the kids, and had our Christmas that night after we got home.
Aiden did pretty well that night, but his condition started to deteriorate the next day. We checked his oxygen saturations, and he had dropped below 90% again by Friday afternoon. We put oxygen on him and continued with his breathing treatments, but we didn't have much oxygen left in our tanks. We made an appointment with the weekend clinic on Saturday and took him in to see the doctor on Saturday afternoon. The doctor there said he needed to be admitted to the hospital again. Our flight was scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 31st! We didn't know if we were going to make it. And on top of it all, we still had to pack up our house and move! STRESS!
Amaraa stayed with Aiden at the hospital this time while I rushed home to try to get everything packed and moved. With some help from the Elder's Quorum, we were able to get the big furniture out and moved. I worked like crazy, and my parents came up to help me. Together we got most of the stuff packed and moved to the storage unit. Aiden improved slowly this time, and by Monday night he was looking better. He continued to improve Tuesday, and by Tuesday night, they felt confident that they would be able to discharge him on Wednesday morning. Our flight didn't leave until 10:00 PM that night, so we were relieved to hear that. He was released on Wednesday around noon. We continued to pack and move furiously, but finally had to give it up to pack our 20 bags (10 checked, 5 carry-ons, and 5 backpacks) for our trip. I had to run a few errands before we headed to the airport on Wednesday night, and when I returned home to finish packing, I noticed that our Dominican immigration paperwork that we had worked for a solid month to complete, was missing. I couldn't find it anywhere! I finally concluded that it somehow must have been packed in a box and moved to the storage unit. An hour before we were set to leave for the airport, we kneeled down as a family to pray that we would find the folder. I quickly ran over to the storage unit and searched through the boxes on the surface of the stacks of stuff. It was nowhere to be found! I was devastated. My parents said that they would come back up the next day from Price to search for it, and that we should just go to the airport as planned. Since we only needed the paperwork for our visas, and not to enter the country, they would find it and send it to us. So we headed to the airport, worried sick that we would have to do all that work and preparation again.

We flew to New York overnight, and then to St. Maarten the next morning.
As we arrived in St. Maarten, I received a text message that my parents had found the folder in the storage unit. Whew! We had to stay over night in St. Maarten since our flight to Dominica wasn't leaving until the next day. Since the airport didn't offer a luggage storage service, we had to wrangle all of our 20 bags into a taxi and to our hotel. It was hot and humid in St. Maarten, so this wasn't an easy task -- not to mention that we were still wearing/carrying our winter clothes from Utah! Anyway, we made it. We were so exhausted by the time we got checked into our hotel that all we had energy to do was find a McDonald's for a quick bite to eat and then we crashed. We slept from about 3:00 PM to 9:00 PM and then were thirsty, so I went out alone to find water.

Turns out that there aren't a lot of shops open on New Year's Day at 9:00 PM in St. Maarten. I walked all over the place and finally found a gelato place open that had water for sale. It was right on the beach and it was so peaceful and beautiful walking down there (nearly alone) at night. I took the water back to the hotel and we went back to bed.
The next morning, we woke up early and decided to go down to the beach before we had to head to the airport. The kids loved the beach and had a great time.
The sand was white and the water was aqua blue and warm.

The beach in St. Maarten

There were five cruise ships in port, but we were there before the cruise passengers had arrived, so we had the place to ourselves for a while. What a beautiful place! We ate breakfast at a local grill and then headed back to the hotel to call our taxi driver and get checked out.

Eating breakfast at Cornie's in St. Maarten

Again, we had to wrangle all of our bags out to the street. We got back to the airport and checked our baggage in, again paying excess baggage fees for all of our extra bags. We got to our gate and saw several people from my class that I had been with in Miami. Our flight was delayed an hour and a half. The airline we were flying is called LIAT. The locals joke that it stands for "Leave Island Any Time" or "Luggage Isn't At Terminal" because they are always late and they are notorious for losing luggage. Our flight was delayed an hour and a half, so they didn't disappoint. Once we got on the plane, they were having computer trouble, so we sat on this little turboprop plane with no air conditioning, in the heat, for another hour. It was like a sauna in there! We finally took off just as the sun was setting. The flight to Dominica was short and uneventful. Ross University met us at the airport and transported all of the arriving students and their luggage to campus for check-in.

In our apartment

At check-in, they fed us and we got our student IDs. A friend of mine from UVU who is studying here at Ross met us there and had arranged for the LDS missionaries to use their truck to transport us to our apartment. When we got there, we were met by a welcoming committee of several of the Portsmouth LDS branch members. They helped us get settled in for the night and we sat outside and talked for a while. We've only been here for a couple of days, but it already feels like we have known these people for years. They have been so welcoming and helpful. We have spent much of the past few days together, and they have really made the transition easier. It already feels like we are part of a big family here. On Sunday, we attended church for the first time here. The branch meets in Portsmouth, which is just a couple of miles down the road from where we live. There are quite a few LDS students here, and 20 or so local members were there on Sunday. The branch president lives in the apartment right above ours.

At church in Dominica

Church is only two hours here, so it reminded me of my time in Mongolia.
Today was school registration. We received our physician's white coats and got set up for classes. Tomorrow morning, orientation starts and lasts through the end of the week. Our apartment is right across the street from campus and directly across the street from the anatomy lab and classroom where I will spend the majority of this semester.
So, things are good. Aiden made the trip OK and is doing much better. The island air is good for him. All of our luggage made it with us despite the horror stories we have heard, and we are settling into our apartment. This island is beautiful and we are going to have a wonderful time here. I'm excited to start this semester and can't wait for everything that is in store for us.
I'm going to try to keep up with this blog as much as I can, but I probably won't have a lot of time. I'll try to get Amaraa to contribute as well. We hope all of our friends and family will use it as a way to keep up to date on what's happening with our family while we're down here. Enjoy!