Prayers please!

Ellie's mom and dad have decided to make a huge mess this Christmas break and let Ellie really "play" with her food.  Believe it or not some research out of Europe states that this is the best way to get kids to eat.  We've tried it some before, but as you can see below...we've taken it to a new level.  These were the first few seconds of our session!  Pray it works - pray she starts eating enough to wean her tube feedings soon!

Thanks friends!

Merry Christmas!

Greetings Holey Ellie friends!

Merry Christmas from Ellie and all of us!  I thought I would share a few pictures from Ellie's world.  With her being in the "touchy, grabby" stage, we had to get creative with our tree this year.  Having limited options we decided to not get a real tree (a first for us) and use some small artificial trees we inherited.

With children you must sometimes find new and different ways to go about everyday things.  So thanks to Ellie we constructed what I think is a lovely little "Christmas corner" in the house.

Here is Ellie viewing it from the floor, well out of her reach :).

And here is a close up of some ornaments. Only two "types" of ornaments made it this year...the "kids" ornaments and the "shoes".  Ellie's Aunt  Louise has sent us lovely shoe ornaments over the years from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York!  The kids love them so much.    Aren't they fancy? :)

And a little Christmas cheer made it to the den.  Notice the music channel I put on tv with the roaring fire for ambiance.  But don't notice the four piles of laundry on the left bookshelf waiting to be collected and put away.

Allow me to sneak in a little picture of Ellie's biggest brother Jacob on his first day of altar serving!  What a gift to watch him serve the Lord and after mass put out the three candles of the Advent wreath on Gaudete Sunday.  Ellie was watching from waaaaay far away in the cry room, but she was well pleased to see him up there.

I thought our counter top was a funny picture this week.  From the left: dusting that I've had out for about two weeks now - happy to say that got done today; cute holiday cookie jar with all of us on it; a bag full of cough/pain medicine and a couple new boxes of it; and a container of hot chocolate mix given by a student at Jeff's work - paper cups and all!  What a thoughtful gift!  The house is split on the "milk or water" debate.

A walk around the block to drop off some goodies.  This was the best I could do for a picture of cold temps and a beginning drizzle.

Lots of love to all of you - thank you for continuing to check in on us and for your support!  Keep praying for Ellie to eat in 2015 - I don't have any news about that yet but maybe will early in the year.  God bless and Happy New Year!!!!!

Hello!

Happy December everyone!  All is well in Ellie's world.  Ellie did have a cold that lasted weeks and weeks...she still seems congested but some of the rest of us in the house have it lingering too.  We had a nice Thanksgiving followed by a lovely wedding anniversary to celebrate our marriage!  A quick little smile from Ellie courtesy of her siblings taking pictures of her in Mommy's big "teacher" chair :).