Quiet February

These past few weeks we've finally felt like we were back in our normal routine after the holidays.  It's been nice!  Very "ordinary".

One of the things that makes us feel like we're ourselves here is lots and lots of backyard play.  The kids will go out in the afternoon after all the school work is done for the day and they will stay out there - sometimes until dark!  They get a hearty snack, as seen below, to hold them over until dinnertime.

A typical afternoon snack.  Ellie gets the bowl.  The others share and like counting things and dividing them by 3 😊.

Here is a popcorn and smoothie day (a constant request).  I didn't mean to capture this private moment of Jacob praying before his snack but it was so sweet I wanted to remember it.

Xavier and Julia have their "table for two" they like to eat at together.

Another part of our routine is quiet times indoors doing puzzles!  We went through a stage where Ellie could not be left alone with a puzzle on the floor but that has passed and she now shows great self-control with the puzzles!

In the background above you can see the quilt I have been working on for a while now for Jacob.  It is finally finished!  Ellie likes to climb in the other children's beds at night before she goes to her room so here she is with Jacob on his first night with his new blanket!

I was given the instructions to make the quilt "Georgia, golf, football and Green Bay Packers".  

In other news - Ellie got an exciting new piece of therapy equipment!  About 6 months ago I tried to get this approved and it took that long to get the funding for it and get it ordered. It's what most therapy centers have at their facility and now we have one at home for her to use!

It's a swing she can go back and forth on as well as spin in circles!

She's so happy!!!

It was so precious - when she first saw it and used it, she kept doing the sign for "thank you" to me!  She was saying thank you over and over to show her gratitude!  What a sweetheart!

She is on and off it all day long and always makes lots of fun sounds and noises when she is swinging!

This swing has several other attachments we plan on getting for her in the future.  Next we're working on another exciting item to help her live the best life possible.  Stay tuned!

Boo Boo

As most of you know we had two boys and then came two girls.  We'd never seen the inside of a hospital or an Emergency Room, for that matter until Ellie. And you know how much of a hospital we saw with her the first year of her life.

The next hospital occurance was Julia in 2015.  Two, in fact - back to back. A fall at a playground with a head injury scare that turned out to be nothing and a trip in the house that split her forehead and required seven stitches.

Then Wednesday night of this week we were having a quiet evening. In fact I had just said to Jeff, "We are having a quiet evening."  Then Ellie stood up, took three steps and fell/tripped.  Her forehead came in contact with a spindle on a railing in our den and it split her sweet skin right open.  Flashbacks of Julia's injury hit us and we decided it's best to get it closed up so it will heal faster and scar less.

So Ellie and Mommy took a trip to the pediatric ER and had a great experience. It was fast (it was 7:30 pm), everyone was friendly and happy to meet Ellie, and Ellie was just happy to have WiFi on her iPad.  Here she is waiting to be seen.

Putting pressure on the injury, trying carefully not to block her view of Blue's Clues.

I blurred out the injury for those of you that might not like to see gashes of flesh.  A little "glue" was all it took during which she held perfectly still.

We headed back home, washed the blood off both of us and she went right to sleep. She hasn't touched it sense and when people at church today asked what happened they got a blank stare back from her as if she's forgotten!  We'll take the bandage off at the end of this week after 10 days and hopefully it will continue to heal with time.  I feel like she and I were both thinking, "This is nothing!" while we were going through it :).

2017!

Happy New Year Ellie friends!!!

We had a wonderful Christmas, I hope you did as well!

Remember the cold Ellie had at Thanksgiving?  It lasted until the week before Christmas!  We even had to brush up on some of our old skills and administer a steroid to her through a handy little machine called a nebulizer. This time they sent us one that looked like a seal!  She did pretty well with it and the other kids were really into watching her do it.

It took about 5 minutes each time for her to fully inhale the drug.  We had to do it four times a day.

Depending on where she was at the time of the treatment or what kind of mood she was in - the ipad was often used in conjuction with machine!  I love how her little hand popped up on the mask in this photo!

 We had a wonderful time visiting family over the holiday!

At mass, it was really hard to get a a good family photo for some reason.  We tried a couple different locations.

Here are some outtakes!

What is Ellie doing to Jacob?!

"Look, over there Ellie - smile!"

 Ellie loooooved opening presents this year.  Her presents. Your presents.  Everybody's presents!!!

Thankfully we've started the new year on a healthy foot!  Let's see if we can dodge any further bugs this season!

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.