President's Day

On President's Day last week we told stories to the kids about George Washington.  Mikey started doing the sign for "wash hands".  We thought for a moment what he was trying to tell us, then realized he was signing George Washinghands!

It's been an unusually warm winter so far.  While my coworkers on the East coast have had several feet of snow dumped on them, our children have enjoyed sunny picnic lunches on the front porch:

We got a few inches of snow this weekend.  But while the weather was warm and to get into the seasonal spirit while she was visiting us, Liz's sister Carrie helped us decorate the inside of our house for winter.  She's home now, but her decorations still remain:

Icicles hanging down

Snowflakes falling from the ceiling

Each of us had our own snowman the kids helped make

Liz recently had a chance to visit Mikey's preschool and watch him in action.  He really enjoys it and is making progress both in his signing and in his speech.

Michael loves this large round mat with the alphabet and numbers written and drawn out in sign language

Painting time!

Painting a boat

Matching words with pictures

This is Michael's favorite toy right now.  We used to have one just like it years ago and gave it away since nobody played with it.  Dang.  Maybe we should see if the thrift store we gave it to still has it. :-)

Sarah's 3rd grade class recently put on a show called "Pen Pals" which depicted children from around the world. Sarah sang a solo and had some speaking parts as well. Our kids are still singing and humming the songs in different languages.

Sarah moved into Michael's room recently and has been the best big sister.  Sometimes at night when he's scared she lets him crawl into bed next to her.

The Fort Collins temple is coming along nicely.  The outside work is absolutely beautiful.

Can you tell what holiday we just had?  Our family wrote love notes to each other one night for Family Home Evening and we stuck them all over the kitchen.

Brooke sure is growing big and strong.  Could it be from all the milk she's drinking?  She still has a dairy allergy, but it's getting a little better.

Home at last

After spending an enjoyable New Years at the Bellamys we opted to make the trip back home the following Monday.  Liz's sister Carrie is going to stay with us for a month in Colorado, so we caravaned back together.  According to the weather forecast and road reports the roads were open and there wasn't anything to be overly concerned about.  After driving for 5 hours we got to Rawlins, Wyoming and discovered they had shut down I-80 and all bypass roads for the next 150 miles!  As best as we could tell it wasn't due to a snowstorm, but rather the wind was blowing so hard it was causing whiteout conditions from snow on the ground.  All the hotels in the area were full. 

After considering our options, we drove all the way back to Utah and spent the night back with the Bellamys!  We had driven for 10 hours just to get back to where we started!  The Bellamys were patient and accommodating and even turned their Christmas lights back on for us before we arrived.  The four older children spent the night sleeping under the Christmas tree so that Brooklyn would have her own room.  She had stayed in the room with us for the duration of our trip, but after almost a week of her waking us up crying throughout the night, we'd had enough!

On Tuesday the wind died down, so once again we ventured to make the drive back to Colorado.  Michael was super upset to have to get back in the car and made it clear we had used up his entire allotment of good traveler behavior the previous day.  After I'd had enough screaming, I pulled over and moved his carseat to a different location so he could spend the day staring at the back of someone else's seat instead of mine.  That seemed to appease him, and we resumed our journey without further incident.

We tried to make the most of the long drive and took a more leisurely pace on Tuesday.  For instance, it was the third time stopping at Little America in two days, and at each stop we let the kids have an ice cream cone or play at the playground there.  They all wanted to climb the buffalo statue.

Little America, Big Buffalo

Fortunately the roads didn't close on Tuesday and we finally made it back home and were able to sleep in our own beds again. 

It's been great having Carrie with us, she's been fun to have around and has been a huge help.  This week Liz and I and a few of the kids have been battling with colds, so having an extra adult set of hands has been a particular blessing.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

The day after Michael's clean MRI, he underwent eye surgery to try to help correct his inability to keep his eyes straight.  This is his third such surgery in the last two years.  Last time he had the surgery he was pretty miserable for about a week and a half afterwards.  This time around he was miserable the day of the surgery, but by the next day he was happy and doing just fine.  Another great blessing this Christmas season!

Michael has been anesthetized so many times we've long since lost count.  Nowadays they usually give him nitrous oxide (laughing gas) to put him to sleep before they tap into a vein and give him propofol to keep him asleep.  This week, one of the times he was given laughing gas he actually did start laughing.  It was the funniest thing and it made the doctors laugh, too!  Then, like Vizzini in "The Princess Bride", Michael conked out mid-laughter and was fast asleep.

We've had an unusually warm December, which I certainly don't mind.  Christmas Day however, it started to snow, so we got our white Christmas this year after all.

 We love our Christmas lights this year

Riding on a sled after a white Christmas

One of the Christmas gifts Liz and I gave to our 3 oldest children is some 2-on-1 time.  On the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Christmas we hired a babysitter and both Liz and I took one of our children out on a lunch date to the restaurant of their choice.  We enjoyed getting some more personalized time with our children, and those at home enjoyed getting their face painted by the babysitter.

Baking Christmas cookies

We can't wait for Christmas!

We spent Christmas Day at home relaxing with the family.  Santa left a new book for each child under the small Christmas trees in the children's bedrooms so they had a present to open and something fun to read while waiting to open presents.  One noteworthy present this year was an indoor slide for Michael.  He absolutely loves climbing slides and sliding back down again, and it's so good for helping him build up his strength and coordination.  So he was thrilled to get an indoor slide he can use when it's cold outside.

Michael's new slide

Brooklyn loves to eat, er, color with her new markers

We were supposed to head to Utah to visit Liz's family the day after Christmas, but we'd been having intermittent problems with our minivan.  We had taken it into the shop a few weeks earlier, but the mechanic couldn't reproduce the problem.   So we continued driving it until the 23rd, when the strange noise returned, the engine stalled, and the check engine light went on.  We took the van back into the shop on the 24th (Christmas Eve), but the mechanic was closed during the holidays and couldn't fix it until the 29th.  They were able to find and fix the problem this time around, so we drove out to Utah on the 31st instead (New Years Eve).  With the snowstorms we've received since Christmas Day it's unclear we would have been able to make the drive anyway, even if the minivan hadn't broken down. As it was, we had cold temperatures during the drive (it was -15 degrees in Fort Collins as we packed up the car to go) but the roads were clear and we arrived in time to bring in the New Year with the Bellamy family.

Clean scan today!!!

Mikey's MRI was clean today!!! What an amazing and wonderful Christmas present for our family. I feel like we can start breathing again! He failed his hearing test, though, so after he recovers from tomorrow's eye surgery the next step is to take him to an ear, nose, and throat specialist to see what's up.

He couldn't help showing off his Santa beard and hat today, and even went around saying "Ho ho ho!" Except he says it "Oh oh oh!" He's such a fun kid.

Lots to be thankful for

Christmas is coming so quickly we haven't even had a chance to write about Thanksgiving!  It was wonderful.  Liz's parents and two of her sisters came to visit us for a few days for Thanksgiving.  Her sister Carrie had a birthday on Thanksgiving so we had twice the reasons to celebrate!

Liz ran her first 5K ever on Thanksgiving morning.  She's been training for it for several months now.  It was a local 5K held in our neighborhood, and we gathered together and cheered her on as she ran down our street near our house.  We were so proud of her for working so hard and accomplishing her goal.

 

Brooklyn enjoyed our breakfast feast on Thanksgiving morning.  She likes to close her eyes tight and open her mouth wide when we feed her.  It's the cutest thing ever, she looks like a little baby bird saying "Cheep! cheep! cheep!"

To help Carrie celebrate her birthday we took the family to the Swetsville Zoo near our house.  It has all kinds of amazing sculptures made out of old metal parts from cars, machinery, appliances, you name it.

 

After Thanksgiving we enlisted help from Liz's family to set up Christmas decorations both inside and outside the house.  The kids particularly love the new Christmas train we purchased this year.  And they always love spending a night sleeping under the Christmas tree.

Spencer absolutely loves his new Santa hat and beard.  It's a good fit for his jolly personality.

This coming week is a busy week for our family.  Our kids have the usual Christmas parties at school and wrapping things up for the holiday (both literally and figuratively).  Last week we discovered Spencer has a bad astigmatism in one eye and will be getting glasses to help correct it.  We've been having intermittent car problems that we need to get resolved before we do any holiday traveling. Etc, etc.

But all of that pales in comparison to the end of the week.  Michael has an MRI on Thursday to check for any cancer recurrence.  It's been a miracle that his scans have been clean for the last two years, and we hope and pray that continues to be the case on Thursday.  He has failed his last two hearing tests and will get another one after the MRI on Thursday to see he is experiencing genuine hearing loss as a result of his cancer treatments. Then on Friday, if Michael's MRI is clear, he goes in for eye surgery.  One of his eyes is still having trouble staying straight, so the surgery will shorten and reattach his eye muscle to help keep his eyes more inline and hopefully dramatically improve his vision.

Through it all we have so much to be grateful for.  It has been almost three years since Michael was diagnosed with a life threatening brain tumor, and it's really miraculous that he's still with us.  His challenges are staggering at times, but he brings our family so much joy.  We're so grateful for wonderful family and friends who are with us during good times and bad.  And we're particularly grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ, whose birthday we celebrate at this Christmas season.  He understands our burdens perfectly, for he has carried them himself. 

Celebrating a Happy Birthday (in more ways than one)

A few weeks ago we celebrated Sarah's ninth birthday.  Our little girl is growing up so fast!  Kate, one of her best friends from school, has the same birthday.  They're fascinated by the thought that they were in the same hospital at the same time, born just hours apart from each other.  It was a pretty low-key birthday this year, but Sarah really enjoyed it.  Especially being able to stay in her pajamas for most of the day.  She even enjoyed attending Kate's birthday party, and tried hard to be gracious and not too jealous about celebrating a friend's birthday on her own special day.

At church a few Sundays ago I was trying to help Michael keep quiet by writing letters and numbers on the magna doodle.  He's been able to sign his letters and numbers for a long time and enjoyed signing as I wrote them.  Then I tried writing words on the magna doodle so he could finger spell them.  The first word I wrote was MOM, and like a champ he finger spelled M-O-M.  But then he did the sign for mom!  He actually read that word!  Next I tried DAD, and he finger spelled it and did the sign for dad.  I wrote down harder words, like BABY, CHEESE, CRACKER, and ICE CREAM.  He read them all and did their sign.  He even read a few with two words, like HAPPY BIRTHDAY.  Liz and I were both in tears as we watched in amazement as our 3-year old read these words to us.  I wonder if the person speaking in church thought we were particularly moved by his sermon. :-)  As much as Michael can't do because of his disabilities, we never cease to be amazed by what he CAN do.

Here are a few other random pictures.

Whenever we get the ladder out the kids always beg us to let them climb it.  Michael and Brooklyn are no exception.

Whitney and Spencer dressing up as Mary.  Or shepherds.  Or something like that.

Halloween 2014

Halloween is here again!  Each of the kids picked out a pumpkin and we helped carve it up for them.

This year I took the kids to Utah for a long weekend to celebrate at the awesome annual Bellamy Halloween party.  I dressed up to look like I do most of the time - right out of bed in my bathrobe.  Reminds me of when I had to dash the girls to school early this week in my bathrobe.  I'm sure the neighbors think we are really weird.  The kids played musical costumes and rotated through a few this year.  I think only Sarah and Michael kept their same costumes. 

Sarah had her Halloween piano recital and did great.  She was an excellent Hermione for Halloween this year.

I also volunteered to help with Sarah's Halloween party.  The kids loved the "mummy wrap" game.

Whitney originally wanted to dress like a vampire princess, but after one night in that costume, she switched to snow princess instead.

Spencer started out as a pirate, then insisted on trying on Michael's cowboy costume, and then eventually settled on Iron Man.  He was pretty proud of this costume and I caught him at his Kindergarten Halloween party right before Michael had a major tantrum and we had to quickly leave to school after enough teachers came out of their rooms to check out what kid was screaming/wailing at the top of his lungs.

Michael made a really awesome cowboy this year.

Brooklyn transformed into the cutest little black kitty ever!  She is at such an adorable age, I just can't get enough of it, except when she randomly shrieks so loud it startles us.  Tim calls her "the drive-by screamer." 

We took the kids trick-or-treating at Tim's work (Intel) for a long walk from cubicle to cubicle to rake in the candy. We often give a lot of what we get at Intel out at night to those that come to our door.

It's a tradition every year to crowd Tim and kids into his cubicle and take a picture.  This is the one time of year we get to see where he works.

Happy Halloween!