Advent Calendar from the Mother Land

When we were little we lived in Germany for a couple of years and every year my parents got each of us these advent calendars full of little chocolate windows. You couldn't find them here , so imagine my delight when I saw them in the aisle at Market Street. Yipppeee!!





Straight from the Mother Land...via Jersey?



Emilee with her first advent calendar. Too bad she can't eat the chocolate yet :)

Christmas Decorating - All Done!

This is a lovely Christmas arrangement that David's work sent us after he got out of the hospital. It was great except for the large pine branch that was shoved in the middle. David is allergic to pine and when my house started to smell so nice, I found the culprit and had to unfortunately toss it out.






Took me a while, but the Christmas decorations are finally up. Yea!!

There's no place like home...

especially when the alternative is Presby Hospital in Dallas. David's surgery went really well last week. I was shocked - I had grown accustomed to him being a problem child for the surgeons, so when he was an A+ kid who actually had less surgery time than they anticipated, I was thrown for a very nice loop. Another plus is that they pulled his gross drain (it was draining out the extra fluid his body produced at the surgery site) so I didn't have to deal with it at home. I was not excited about measuring and emptying out his liquid goo.

And if Christopher is reading this blog, I'm sure I just totally grossed him out right now. Sorry :) Here are some new photos from hopefully our last medical crisis - or at least until the next major holiday rolls around.

Before the unveiling...

This is after he had 1/2 his staples removed at the surgeon's office. Congratulations to incision #3. It wins the prize with a record 42 staples!! By the way - totally love the L that it makes. Yeah - I paid the surgeons a little extra to forever mark my man with my initial. That's right ladies - L is for the lovely Liesl - don't touch he's mine!!

Here is a nice shot of what I refer to as the home health care hole. I was tired of his infusion stuff not having a home, so I put it in this lovely basket to make it look a little nicer on the counter. Don't think it really worked, but at least this helps to maintain it all in one place. Dr has him on a new drug for 6 weeks - one that they have to monitor closely because it can inflame all the muscles in your body and require re-hospitalization. Hmmmm...I asked the Dr. if we wanted to tempt fate with this medication - David's history would indicate that he will get this side effect. We're just lucky like that I guess.




And lastly, just wanted to send a very thankful shout out to the wonderful family and friends that have helped us. We couldn't have done it without you...

Pictures of Em

Random pictures from the last month.

She likes to shop with mom, and touch all the clothes along the way.

She is very cautious with new things and must first inspect them with her ET finger.

She loves to roll underneath everything and then scream when she gets stuck. She also loves to push the barstools on the tile because she likes the noise.

Halloween

We had a great time dressing Emilee up as our little Goldfish. She did great wearing the costume and she wore it Sat at the trunk or treat and then we spent Halloween over at Christopher and Debbie's. It was also the first Mavericks game of the season, so Em wore her jersey in support of the Mavs!!

Holidays = Trips to ER

In the last 5 years, David has gone to the ER 3 times. Each time we arrive at the ER it is in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday. The first 2 times were Thanksgiving - 2 years in a row - and I would then have to call my dad at 7:00 am and cry and tell him that we wouldn't be able to bring the mashed potatoes because we were in the ER and David was being admitted into isolation because he had bacterials meningitis. They then discovered after he had been in the hospital for three days that he was leaking spinal fliud from a hole at the base of his skull. Surgery was done to fix it and we thought the weirdness was over. That was year #1. The next year almost to the day (Thanksgiving again!!) we were in the ER at Dallas Presby being admitted with a serious case of osteomyleotis, or as Dave refers to it, bone rot. He had a staph infection in his collarbone that had spread to his sternum. After some harrowing surgery, they deemed him well and we skipped Thanksgiving that next year and just ate Mexican food. I also have had David go in for a full body checkup every October to catch anything that may be brewing.


His last Thanksgiving episode was three years ago, so imagine my surprise when at 4:00 am on the 4th of July we found ourselves in the ER again - on a holiday!! This is like a crazy episode of House. What we thought was an asthma attack turned into a large mass in his chest next to his heart that was preventing him from being able to breathe. After 3 days in ICU, the doctors finally started to piece everything together. Turns out they hadn't gotten all the bone rot last time and it had been festering for the last 3 years and came back with a vengence. It really went to town on poor David. After another harrowing surgery, we are waiting for surgery #2 to remove the cement and pins that are holding his collarbone and sternum together, and replace them with a muscle flap. Here are some pictures from our medical travels the last 5 years. The saran wrap is because you can't get the incision or his permanent IV line wet, and it being around the holiday season, all I had was blue. I think it adds a nice touch!!

CAUTION!! If you, like my brother, are grossed out by medical pictures don't look below...

David's first words after he saw the 22 staples were, " They pull babies out of smaller incisions, what did they do!" This years incision was a little bigger with 28 staples - which he kept to send to our nephews on missions so they could always have a piece of Uncle Dave with them. Grosss!











Emilee - counting all the money that is going out the door for medical bills. Thank goodness for insurance!!

It's official!!!

Right before David went into surgery a couple of weeks ago, we were able to finalize Emilee's adoption and take her to the temple to have her sealed to us. It was a crazy hectic day, but we are now so blessed to have our family together forever.

That's how we roll...

Emilee is 7 1/2 months now and instead of crawling she rolls. Freakishly enough, that is the same exact thing that I did as a kid. There are no pictures of me crawling, just me rolling down the hallway. As you can see by the pictures below, even though she doesn't crawl, she gets around just fine.

Introduction

Trying out this blogging thing as a way to keep everyone updated - really everyone just wants to see what Emilee is doing. Emilee was adopted in Jan and everyday is an adventure. She is almost 7 months old, and we are so blessed that she had such wonderful and loving birthparents who made the decision to place her for adoption. Here's a couple of pictures from the last seven months....