Christmas Rewind and Briggs' 1st Haircut

Briggs and his cousin Johnny at my mom and dads

Elli and her cousin Kaylei at my mom and dads
Elli on Christmas Eve

Briggs on Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve before present opening

Christmas Day morning - Santa Presents

Christmas Day morning - Santa Present

The kids with their Santa presents

Briggs' 1st Haircut

Finished Product - my little man

Christmas Happenings

Christmas is only 1 week away!!! It is such a fun time with the kiddos! I have some shopping to get done and I'm baking cookies to deliver to the neighbors. That is all happening this weekend. Last weekend Elli had her Christmas program at church and that was SO sweet. She did a very good job. Briggs on the other hand... he wanted to run up there and join them so it was difficult to distract him.

List to Santa:

Elli - Guitar, microphone and microphone stand - she LOVES to put my tank tops and boots on and perform to Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood. She is pretty good actually and knows pretty much every word.

Briggs- Elli wrote for him and said he wants an airplane. VERY appropriate for our plane, car, truck loving boy!

I am pretty shocked I have this picture. Elli has always been pretty terrified of Santa in person. In fact, I've never even attempted to get her picture with him. This was taken a few weeks ago at a benefit we went to. It was for a little boy who has snack with Elli and her friends at pre-school. He was born deaf and blind and has leukemia. :( He is a very sweet little boy. As you can see, she was very shy and if her friend Macey and Madilyn wouldn't have been there and gone before her, we wouldn't have this picture.
This picture made it on the Christmas card this year... if they ever come in the mail!
Another cutie!

Briggs has been infatuated with the Christmas ornaments. He has had a lot of fun taking them off, bringing them to me and saying, "uh-oh" and then putting them back. This can last for hours. Funny kid!

This weekend we are meeting up with a family from Colorado. She is a friend of my best friend. They had their first baby in April and he was born profoundly deaf. They were of course shocked and devastated. They later found out that he has Connexin 26 just like Briggs. We have been talking ever since he was a tiny baby. They are coming through Nebraska this weekend and we are meeting up. Can't wait!!! I get to meet their little guy and they get to meet Briggs and see just what c.i.'s can do! Their little boy it set for surgery around 10 months old.

I'm still here!

It's been almost 2 months since my last post! WOW! I will tell you that is because I have been SUPER busy. Yesterday, seems like October and today it's December. Not sure where the month of November went!

It started with me serving jury duty. It was a 6 day long trial with me not getting home until 6pm or later every night. Then a 70 year old women pulled out right in front of me at a busy intersection, so it was a week of running around getting a rental, buying new car seats, taking the old ones to her insurance company etc. During all this it is my absolute busiest time of year at work... so for 2 weeks I was working until 6 or 7 pm. preparing materials, conducting meetings for all our staff, collecting back all the appropriate paperwork etc. In the middle of it all my knee starting swelling and was about as big as my head so I had to go to the doctor and of course he said it was from the accident. Then this past week everyone but my husband had colds. I still need to do a bunch of shopping but I'm not stressed about it because I know it'll get done. I have my Christmas picture card things ordered but still need to write my letter. Elli's Christmas program at church is this Sunday so that will be fun and cute to watch!

Briggs is doing SO amazing with his hearing! What a miracle those c.i.'s are! The other day I literally whispered very softly, "Briggs, what does a snake say?" He stuck his hand out and started his slither move with his hand and arm and made the "ssss" sound. The "s" sound is a high pitch/frequency sound which for him was the toughest to get the right"program" for but we definitely have it right if he heard me whisper it!! SO amazing! He can make every animal sound you can think of and our 2 favorites are his elephant (he rolls his tongue and his arm is the trunk) and his turkey (he puts his hand under his chin and says "obble, obble,obble, obble". SO cute! He's approximating all the sounds with the screen over the mouth, so by sound only. He's saying a bunch of words and he's signing a lot too! He's a good little signer and we are so happy we've incorporated that and will always continue it. We were at a benefit on Sunday and there is another little boy who I know, who has c.i.'s and he was jumping around in the bounce house (no c.i.'s in those bounce house because of the static) anyway, it was time for him to get out and his dad was signing to him and I just thought... how do parents communicate to their child when the c.i.'s are off if they've never learned sign?? I'm sure it works out for them and they've found their own way but I'm glad we have that backup! Our t.v. is downstairs so Nick spends a great deal of time down there. :) Briggs will stand at the top of stairs and yell, '"da-da", da-da" over and over again until Nick either responds or physically goes to the bottom of the stairs.

That's all for now... I have A LOT more I could say but I need to get going. I'll try to post sooner than a month and a half from now.

Pumpkin Patch, Friends & Pumpkin Carving - All in one day!

Finished product... this picture was at the bottom of this post, but it got deleted somehow, so I had to re-upload it. I'll start with the "finished product", and the end of our FUN, BUSY day, at the beginning of my post. Elli picked out a Disney Princess carving kit. Nick did the Jasmine pumpkin, I did the middle one and the princess castle. Elli helped dig the gooey stuff out and poke holes for the patterns. See the bottom of the post for more carving pictures. :)

So we started out day with church. Elli goes to Sunday School while I sit in church. We've been sick at our house and haven't been for a while so it's all new again for Elli. She cried pretty much the whole time and Briggs was a typical 17 month old who wouldn't sit still and talked and screamed and wanted to run up front. So, it was an interesting trip to church.

After church Nick met up with us (he's getting over his flu and they recommended him not to be in enclosed, close quarters for a while), and we ate lunch at McDonald's and then went on our annual trip to the Pumpkin Patch! The kids had a blast!!!

This was the entrance to a little kid version of a haunted house/maze. The past couple years she's started it but couldn't complete it, and had absolutely no desire to try it again - with Nick going through with her... this year, not only did she make it all the way through, but she went back for more and again!!

So cute!

This picture serves no justice as to how much Briggs LOVED the pony ride!!! He was all smiles, ear to ear during this pony ride! It was SO sweet to him SO excited!!!

Elli has had many pony rides and LOVES them!! To bad they're so expensive!

Elli also LOVED this LONG slide! She did this over and over again too! Nick took Briggs down and he on the other hand, wasn't to sure about it...

We went on a hay rack ride to pick out our pumpkins... Briggs fell asleep on me.

Here are our pumpkins!

Sleeping Briggs!

We got home, unloaded the truck and then our old neighbors arrived!!! This is a picture of Elli and Sierra. They are 3 months apart and we miss them A LOT!! They are a GREAT family! It was great visiting and catching up with Jen.

Elli and Sierra again...

Pumpkin carving pictures! The GOO!!

My Mr.

I asked him to smile for the picture and this is what I got!! I LOVE his fake smile! ADORABLE!!

Still carving... :)

I had to add this...Elli was reading to Briggs and she kept blowing in his ear and he'd laugh and laugh. They were having a good ole time while Nick and I were concentrating on our pumpkins! She is SO great to him!!!

Have a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Roller Coaster Weeks

WOW!! What a LLLLOOONNNGGG delay in posting... It's been a month and a half or so and actually it's been nothing but SAD news since my adorable Ballerina Briggs pictures have been posted.

Since that time one of best friends had gone in for a somewhat, simple outpatient procedure that turned into a serious blood infection that caused her to have a roller coaster two week hospital stay, 3 separate surgeries, that ended in a Hysterectomy. She has 4 children at home and a husband who works nights (which means he must sleep during the day) which in turn means a lot of friends and family had to step up to the plate to help out. WOW, do they have a GREAT support system! How awesome it is to see so many doing great things! Her mom flew in from Arizona. Our other best friend came from Denver and stayed for a week to help out. My other best friend (there are 4 of us and we've been friends for 20 years +) and I sent out mass emails setting up a schedule for help. Meals and meals and more meals brought over. Someone there all hours of the day to help with the kids, cleaning the house, laundry, going to the grocery store, transporting kids to and from school, taking her to her doctors appts., etc. (she was not and still is not able to life anything- even her purse - or drive). She is now over 3 weeks out from her surgery and 6 weeks out from when this all started and starting to get around a little better. Throw another wrench into this story... her son has severe scoliosis and was scheduled to have a major spine stapling surgery done in Philadelphia this past Monday (this has been researched for over 2 years and scheduled for months). Again, her mom had plane tickets bought to meet her in Philadelphia for the surgery, her mother-in-law had plane tickets bought to come her to help her husband with the other kids. They were supposed to leave last Saturday and on Friday her son came to her and said his bottom hurt. She looked and found a boil. She took him in to the doctor. It ended up being staph infection (MRSA) which is extremely contagious and hard to get rid of. So the surgery was cancelled last minute and now the surgery and flights and coordination had to all be rescheduled - A DAY BEFORE THEY WERE TO LEAVE!!! We live in Nebraska. Talk about stress!!!! His curve is severe enough that they bumped other surgeries back to fit him in. His surgery is already rescheduled for December 9th. Please pray everything works out for this go around.

While my friend was in the hospital she had a nurse who is actually friends with some of our friends, whom we've known for the past 10 years or so, she's an acquaintance. Anyway, we found out she was having a double mastectomy because she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer!! We're 30 years old!!!!!!

THEN best friends of ours... my husband's best friend from college calls us and his mom, who is only 55 years old is diagnosed with a very rare cancer and it's stage 4. This story is very hard for me to talk about so I'm leaving it at that...

In addition to all of this... both my kids and my husband end up with most likely the H1N1 flu... Elli had it first, Briggs second and now my husband has it...

So needless to say... between me working full time, having teaching visits 3 to 4 days out of the week, taking care of my friends, being moral support and just an ear for listening, taking care of my own sick family... things have been a LITTLE stressful since my last post!

Some really GREAT things happening... my good, good friend is due to have their LONG awaited baby girl any day now. This is the couple whose mom has the cancer situation I talked about a few paragraphs up. They have been through A LOT to get this baby so her arrival is VERY exciting. My parents purchased land on a golf course and will be building their house and retiring there!! The MOST exciting part of that for me... they will only be 5 minutes away from me. :) AND last night Elli had a Halloween bracelet party that had to be rescheduled due to her flu and I'll post more on that later.

Briggs Cuteness!

These pictures will come back to haunt Briggs when he's older... :) He got into Elli's closet and pulled out her tutu, brought it to me, plopped right down and stuck his legs out for me to put it on. It was so funny and cute! THEN he went to her closet and got her black glittery slipper shoes out, put them on and started walking around very proud of himself! Nick didn't think the story was as funny as I did but I reassured him this means absolutely nothing... he's just having fun.

Elli's 1st BIG Haircut

Elli got her first BIG haircut yesterday and she LOVES it! This is only her 3rd haircut and the first two were just trims. She got about 7 inches cut off and as it was sad for me to see it go, because she had such pretty, long, blonde hair... it ended up being VERY cute!!