What We've Been Up To

We've been terribly busy this last month and not entirely by choice, so I'm finally sitting down tonight to write an update for those who may have think we dropped off the planet. In November, we celebrated Brian's 29th Birthday and our first significant snowfall on the same day. The snow melted in the afternoon sun, but early in the morning it was perfect for the boys to bundle up in their snow gear and go outside and play. They loved being outside again and have since been asking everyday to play in the snow, even when there hasn't been any snow on the ground. I think they've finally figured out that I'm not going to take the time to bundle them up in all that gear when there's no snow to go play in. I have assured them that there will indeed be more snow to go play in.

Our biggest focus has been trying to get Leah healthy again. The cycle goes a little like this runny nose, fever, ear infection diagnosed at doctor's office, oral antibiotics 2 times a day for 10 days, back to office to recheck ears, still fluid present, no infection, but within 2-3 days another runny nose and the cycle continues . . . We've been to the doctor's office approximately 10 times in the last month and Leah's been on 3 different rounds of antibiotics. We've now decided to get ear tubes put in, but that's not scheduled until Dec. 18th (the first available date). She is currently on the strongest antibiotic there is, but its not doing much to keep her fever away for good because she's only kept 3 doses down without throwing it back up. At least we can get her temperature down with ibuprofen, but we haven't completely eliminated it. We see an end in sight with the tubes being put in, but until then we're trying to get through it.

On a more positive note, another highlight was that we took the boys bowling for the first time. Jacob was really excited at first but had a hard time taking turns and lost interest before a full game was played. Peter didn't like getting help rolling the ball down the lane and eventually started getting upset that the pins were getting knocked down (a hard concept to explain to a 2 year old when we usually teach them NOT to knock things over). We also went to Chicago over Thanksgiving to visit with the Yorks. We had lots of good food, good time with family, and lots of babysitters around; an overall nice Thanksgiving week away from home.

Here are some pictures of our first snow day!