November

A belated Happy Thanksgiving, a Happy Advent and an early Merry Christmas!  We're enjoying the most wonderful time of the year here at our house.

In the daily grind, Ellie helps me stay on top of the laundry.  She likes to move the wet clothes into the dryer.

The Cubs win the World Series!!!  Very exciting here watching the games together!

Occasionally Ellie will find herself a bag of "trouble" like I like to say. She was quiet during school and had opened the hall closet where I store all the bathing suits. With Julia's help, she was able to deck herself out in swimming attire - goggles and all.  Yes those are Jeff's swim trunks.

Xavier practicing his card tricks on us all.  Ellie is beginning to grow tall enough to peek over the counter :).

One afternoon the three went golfing with Daddy.  This picture was just too cute with their matching hats!  But the real reason I took the picture was to capture the new shoes!  Not a small detail here in life is finding the perfect shoe for backyard play for kids.  It has to be easy to slip on and off but if it has holes (like Crocs) or too much of that mesh material for breathing, dirt will seep in and the kids come in with black feet.  They'd grown tired of having to wash their feet each time they came in all summer so I finally found some great shoes on-line!  And they were on clearance which made me love them even more!

They wore these shoes on this day to play golf. Two days later we left for Tennessee for Thanksgiving.  There happened to be a pile of mud near the house due to some new construction and our kids (one of them mainly) could not resist climbing this mud "mountain".  The  shoes were never the same. Not only were they stained with red clay, I tried to clean them and ended up using bleach for the inside sole which then leaked to the outside. So now they look like camoflouge shoes.  But, they are still functional!!!  I wanted to remember this story in the category of "best laid plans" with children.  New shoes are new for about two days.

Waving goodbye to the children and Xavier sticks his new shoe out the window.  Little did I know I was also waving goodbye to the new, clean shoe as well.

Ellie loves playing with dishes at Oma and Papa's house. Isn't she thoughtful the way she sets the table?

We all had colds the week of Thanksgiving.  When Ellie gets sick, there is no "in between" with her. She's either herself and running around or she falls asleep.  This is how she watched the Thanksgiving Day parade on t.v.

Luckily by that night she perked up and was ready to have her turkey and mac-n-cheese!!

Back home and feeling better, she empties our cabinets to take inventory for her next table setting.

We like getting our decorations up soon after Thanksgiving so we can enjoy them longer.  Ellie was the most cooperative and full of self-control we've ever seen her be with something like this!  She has not tried once to remove any of the ornaments.  Have we left that stage of life?  The many years we've put trees up on boxes, shelves, etc. to protect little ones from pulling the entire thing on top of themselves!

Trick or Treat!

Last week my sister got married!  It was a fun event outdoors and we all had a great time!  Well, Ellie was fighting a cold and slept on the way there so she was pretty much out of it but...they rest of us had a ball! 

Just as precious asleep as she is awake.

The family proudly finished a 1,000 piece Halloween puzzle just in time for Monday.  It was the first time we'd done it and there was a missing piece!  Don't you hate that?  ;)

Time for Trick or Treating and the long antipated costumes - Mario Brothers and Toad from Nintendo!  It's not like they haven't played  hours and hours of it!  And little Ellie went as....

Blue from "Blues Clues"!!!  She was super into it!

I went as a Cubs fan (woo hoo!!!) and Jeff got lucky at a thrift store and found a green shirt to look the part of the host of the show.

See the resemblance?
 

The first thing Ellie wants to do when she wakes up is dump out her candy like her sibling and play with it.  If you can believe our luck, she does not fuss or ask to eat any of it.  So far I've given her a single M&M and dinner time each night and she's over the moon about that.  Sweet and simple.

Check up

I think I accidentally forgot to share great news with everyone about Ellie's recent cardiology check up.  We've had the same heart doctor since she was 20 weeks in utero :) but this summer he retired.  A new, sweet, young cardiologist came to the clinic and with a cheerful smile shared great news for our family!  She said Ellie looked so good she can now be on annual appointments versus bi-annual. I usually take her April and October and now we just have to go once a year!  Go Ellie!!!

Here she is with big brother Xavier.  The two of them relaxing, putting their feet up :).

Can I document the fact that this week the door to the back yard has begun to swing open and closed and open and closed and open and closed like it usually does? :)  The yard has been unused since about June and it's a noticeable change to have kids in and out and in and out and....I think you get the picture. What better way to celebrate than a bowl of freshly popped popcorn with just the right amount of butter and salt?

I sure am glad I gave eating a chance!!

 These past two weeks have been a bit a little challenging due to the fact that I decided to administer standardized testing in our home.  I had a couple choices including going to the library on two or three Saturdays to get it done but I decided to let them do it during regular school hours. The challenge was keeping Ellie absolutely quiet.  I'd say 50% of the time she was sitting down like in this picture not making a sound.

Ellie sitting in the background with her iPad.  Julia writing some letters and the boys concentrating.  I used a saints book to divide them and remind them what is truly important :).

The other half of the time though she was pulling Julia (who was not taking a test) or needing me.  It worked out ok - we finished!  Doing these tests remind me of how grateful I am for homeschooling. I can directly see what the boys might need extra help with and I can tailor their education toward that.  It also reminded me how academic testing is just one part of their formation and I'm happy to say we've moved back into our normal rhythm or our day.

Jeff and the kids were playing a game and Ellie was cheering for them!  Every time someone said "yes" or "great", she'd put her hands in the air and say "yay"!!!

 The other day we were doing a video chat with some friends that moved and all of the sudden, Ellie came crashing into the scene and stuck her face right in the camera.  It was cute and funny and we all laughed.  One of the boys said "Here's Ellie-Asaurus, watch out for the attack of Ellie".  And right away, Ellie put her hands up to her mouth like she was going to yell and she made a roaring sound!  We all froze, we could not believe it!  She did it again, "RARRRRR" right into the screen!  She heard us say something about an attack and did she even know we were referencing a dinosaur?!!!  We were stunned!!!  It was awesome!

After two months of having the iPad, I finally got all the pictures I wanted with her using it to write a thank you to the foundation that awarded it to her. I wanted to get a video of her using it and it took a while to get just the right thing I was going for.  But her are some of the pictures that I ended up sending in. She was happy to pose and kept turning it around for me to see. I think she wanted "Steve" to be included in the photo too.

She has started this adorable thing where she gets a notebook and writes along with the character when he makes notes in his little notepad in the show.

She's very serious and changes crayon colors often.

There's a great game she likes where she moves shapes around.  She's improved immensely with this since first starting with it!

 
I'm happy to share with you the finished product of the quilt I told you about. It will go to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit where Ellie struggled (and recovered!) from pulmonary hypertension and where she spent those precious few days healing after her open heart surgery.  A few months ago I learned about a friend of a friend who had a baby with Down syndrome in Arkansas.  He was fighting some of the same cardiac and pulmonary battles Ellie faced.  But his conditions seemed much more serious and I read daily emails wringing my hands worried about this sweet little family and their firstborn son, Walt.  They nicknamed him "Walt the Warrior" for his strength through his 9 month battle.  Their family was handed the heavy cross of giving their son back to the Lord last month.  Here is the quilt that will be circulated through the ICU covering babies and children like Walt and Ellie.  His name will be read by many and he will be remembered.

 We had to say goodbye to our wonderful physical therapist who we loved very much!  She's moving on to a different place and we'll miss her!  Here's Ellie working with her on her last appointment.  Luckily they are replacing her next month so we look forward to meeting the new person.

The kids all had a few dollars in their wallet from birthdays, tooth fairy, etc. and wanted to know if they could go grocery shopping!  I almost never take them to the store with me, I'm a well oiled machine with the same list every single week so it's not really that "fun".  But we went on a day where we didn't "need" anything (well, bread always manages to make it in the cart!) and the kids got what they wanted!  Their favorite cereal, fruit and of course things like jello ended up in the mix too!  But we had separate purchases and counting of change and everything!  They were good about sharing their food at home (but mostly stuck to their own items). I think we'll be doing this again!

Ellie was in charge of driving the cart around.

October

October and cooler air has come rolling in like this "train" the kids made on the floor here.  We have Julia as the conductor with her cash register where she took our money.  Jacob and Xavier are in the first car playing a states trivia game using the train's wi-fi.  And Ellie is lounging enjoying the on-board television show.  It happened to be Blue's Clue's - what a coincidence!  I rode in the caboose to support the Georgia bulldogs.  

My view from the school table.  A patriotic Ellie watching the iPad.

Ellie climbed up one evening after bath and shared some chips with Daddy.

Here Jeff is pushing her hair out of her face.  Ellie has this "trust face" she gives us that reaches right down into the depth of your soul!  It's a rare chance that I catch it on camera.  Jeff paid the price of having a mouth full of food in this photo but we both know the cost of being married to a journalist.   

Now to announce a very special project on my sewing table!!!  You might recall when Ellie was in the Cardiac ICU at Egleston the nurses just doted on her like crazy with stuffed animals, blankets and hair accessories.  It was so caring and sweet to come in each morning and see how they'd dolled her up!  All the blankets got washed with the sheets so we saw many different ones during our stay.  One in particular though stood out. It was a quilt.  It was blue and white and on the back I noticed there was stitching that read "Made with Love by the Women's Group of (insert church name here)".  If that was not THE moment I decided to learn to sew when we got home, I don't recall a more powerful inspiration.  I had a machine that I knew how to turn on and sew a straight line.  Thus in 2014 I began my journey to sew clothing for the kids and I loved it.  Always with that ICU blanket in my mind, I started the process of learning to make a quilt.  It is a craft indeed and I am thankful I've had some on line resources to help me learn.

So two years and four quilts later, I wanted to donate a quilt back to Egleston to be used to provide comfort and cuteness to another child in a scary medical situation.  There is a national organization that you go through to donate quilts to hospitals - isn't that handy?!  And there's an Atlanta chapter that has a list of places they deliver quilts to including Ellie's old ICU home!!!!  There's a lovely woman who I connected with and imagine my surprise when she said she'd mail me a "kit".  This group meets and with all donated fabric, they cut up squares and borders and backing and put it all together in a plastic bag with instructions and mail them out to people that can't come to meetings!  I got my kit two days and just stared at it for a few minutes.

My materials to start piecing together.  Cute little animal print with nice cheerful colors.  The instructions were just like every other quilt I'd made with some special notes to make it very "sturdy" like adding a few extra rows of stitching to hold up through the washes.  

Making this quilt has made me so full of joy! I think about the past of her being there, the present of her being so much better and home and the future of what children it will touch.  There's even a tag that comes with it that you can write your name on.  That part of the story will be a future post.  There's a special name I'm going to write on this first one. I expect I'll make many many more and they say you can write whatever you want on the label.  When this one is finished I'll most certainly share every inch of it with you!

Now to some unexpected events that came at the end of September.  Jeff and I both lost our last living grandparent.  Actually my step-grandmother is still with us and lives in Indiana near her children.  But the loved ones that passed are my dad's dad, and Jeff's mom's mom.  My Pepa died on a Monday and Jeff's Oma died the following Tuesday.  It was sad for us both and when we told the kids they associated it as losing their own grandparents.

My extended family still lives in Kentucky so we decided to make the trip to attend the funeral.  It was not an easy decision as we have about 27 things that we have to sort out before we go.  At this stage of our life, even at the very last minute another variable got thrown in the mix.  We decided to leave on a Saturday morning after a soccer game.  But for the third time in about a year now, Ellie did the "wake up and go back to sleep on the couch" thing.  It is the strangest thing to watch and we really worried the first time it happened last year.

Dr. Xavier checks her out.  Good respiratory sounds, good heart rate.

This is no joke.  If you leave her side she wakes up for one second and must feel good enough to get up.  But she makes it two feet then....just lies down wherever she is including the hardwood floor.

I put her back on the couch and here's another attempt she made of getting up.  At least this time she found the rug.

We've talked to both her pediatrician and her cardiologist about it and they both say there's nothing to worry about. Some kids just don't get enough rest and feel tired in the morning. The other day I saw Ellie close her eyes and nod off and dinner so I think when she's tired she just wants to sleep.  She's always been a good sleeper, from day one.

By 10:00 in the morning she was feeling better so off we went to Kentucky!  Of course you-know-who was right there with Ellie the whoooooole way!  Meet "Steve".

The iPad and its charger came in huge during the FOUR hour delay we had due to an accident on I-65.  It was a terrible wreck which is very sad to think about.  Luckily Ellie never even noticed and the other kids were occupied with their own games and books and bags of chips and cookies snacks.  :) 

Once we arrived there was excitement in the hotel of course!  Hotels are FUN!!

Here we are getting ready for my grandfather's funeral.

We were on the top floor which was a mix of scary and cool!

Back at home, someone was turning 7!  Happy Birthday Julia!  She wanted to be "Toad", a character from Mario on Nintendo for Halloween, so here's what the internet's good for. Behold the toadstool hat she's barely taken off since the party!

 Julia loves rainbows which suits her bright, beautiful personality!

One final note here.  If you will allow the melancholy moment surrounding a...plastic fork.  In 2012 when we moved into this house we had a 6-week old Ellie on oxygen, feeding tubes, medicines...you remember right?  :)  A simple but thoughtful gesture of one of Ellie's loving grandparents was to supply us with some paper products and eating utensils to make life easier with the move. Plus now we had the pantry space for such items!  This orange and white box has been on our bottom shelf for four years.  It's not that it took us four years to use 600 forks, we could have used them in four months. They were just so nice (so sturdy and strong, it even says so on the box!) we only used them occasionally.  This weekend for Julia's birthday though we came down to the end of the box.

The one remaining fork with our one and only Ellie.

Each time I see something from "the old days" of that difficult season I pause and thank God for all of it.  The challenges and the triumphs, the tears and the laughs and most importantly that Ellie is now "strong and tough" holding her own fork full of chocolate cake.

School Days

What does a homeschooling house look like at 11:38 in the morning on a Tuesday, you ask?  Let me show you!

Ellie likes to set up a picnic for her and her iPad friends.  Here she is with "Steve" from Blue's Clues with no shortage of drinks to go around!

The two that finish school early can play some learning games while trying (trying) to be quiet.

The oldest is often left alone to finish off some harder subjects and have some one-on-one time with his photographer teacher.



Dr. Ellie was making her rounds doing some check ups when it was time for a lunch break.  In this picture the other three are all into a book.  I at least got them to the table by telling them they could read but they had to eat.  A good problem!  A rare problem so I had to document it! :)

One night we were tucking the kids in and I realized, "We're all wearing blue!!!!"  I used the timer on the camera to capture it.  Completely unplanned!  Maybe it's a subconscious choice we're all making since we're watching 27 episodes of "Blue's Clues" every day.