Two Little Turkey's

Getting into the holiday season and making hand shaped turkeys!

Below is Eva's handprint made into a turkey (age 19 months).

Lila's hand shaped turkey and her name L-I-L-A (age almost 3 1/2).

Gymnastics

Lila went to a gymnastics birthday party recently where she experienced bungie jumping and zip lining. Our brave girl!

Zoo

We had a fabulous morning at the zoo with my cousin Mahkaea on Sunday. The weather was chilly but sunny as you can tell from the photos. 

Super dad!

Medical Bills ~ Ouch!

It's almost laughable the number of medical bills we've gotten over the past 3 months. Now that our insurance company has paid their portion we are finally paying our portion. Ouch! Even with good insurance it's painful to write those checks.

Interestingly St. Vincent's, the first emergency room that sent me home with a ruptured liver and massive internal bleeding, opted to waive my portion of the $1,800 bill that they sent.

We are so grateful to have wonderful insurance to cover the bulk of our expenses. Not everyone is fortunate to have quality medical insurance. The moral of the photo below is that clearly everyone needs to be protected with quality insurance. $146,926.88 is not they type of medical bill a family can recover from. That's like adding a second mortgage payment to the monthly bills.  

A quick progress update. In October I had another ultrasound to take a look at my liver. At the time I had been prepped and expected to hear "all clear" that my liver had repaired itself. That's not what I heard. My doctor called with the news that I have a hematoma on my liver that measures about 2 inches by 3 inches. I was really, really shocked and disappointed to hear this. The next day I called Dr. Cagle, my surgeon, who I've grown to trust significantly. She got back to me and said that she actually wasn't surprised to hear that I still had a hematoma and that considering that half of my liver had a hematoma in July that a 2 by 3 inch hematoma was a great improvement. She did add though that it means that I will remain restricted from contact activity which means no snow skiing for me and please don't punch me in the stomach! I'm clear to run or do spin class as long as I'm careful not to trip, fall or over do it. I'm listening to my body intently.

Lila's First Joke - "Why did the sheep cross the road?"

Look at us: One and a Half

It's fun to look back at Lila when she was Eva's age. Here she is at 16 months and Eva below at 19 months. Lila was bigger at 16 months than Eva is now at 19th months although Eva has much more hair. Both girls have a lot of teeth for their age. Both girls also have a lot of words in their vocabulary. And both have a lot of smiles that they share often. Love them!

 

Halloween 2010

Another year trick-or-treating in our neighborhood and oh what fun. There were so many kids (we had 95 trick-or-treaters at our house before we ran out of candy). Our kids like to take things slow and just walk around our small block but it's a lot of fun because we know so many of our neighbors.

Below little Tinkerbell. This costume was made just a short 25 years ago for me to wear when I was in 3rd grade. My mom made it and it's held up really, really well. Yes, I was tiny in 3rd grade and Lila at nearly 3 1/2 is tall. 

Eva ready to trick-or-treat for the first time at our neighbors Erik and Maria's.  She LOVED trick-or-treating...knocking on the doors, selecting candy, and saying thank you. Her smile was SO BIG the whole time!

Lila, Sam, Hailey, Ethan, Kevin, Thad (behind the monkey face) and Eva. 

Knock, knock...

Eva showing Poppy all of her Halloween loot. Irv and Michele stayed at our house while we were out and handed out candy. This is the 3rd out of 4th year since we've had kids that Irv and Michele have been at our house on Halloween. Isn't that sweet? I think I'd call that a tradition!