The Big Update

Alright, so we are finally mostly unpacked.  I found my card reader and I downloaded new blogging software, so here are the updates. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, this is the longest blog in the history of all blogs and SUPER picture heavy.  Proceed at your own risk

1. We moved! We have our own place on lake Meridian and it is beautiful.

The front of the house.  Isn’t it cute!

The view from our front porch.

A close up of the lake.  You can see more on the other side of this house, but I couldn’t get a good shot because of the sun.

These is coming in the front door.  The upstairs takes you to the living room and the downstairs takes you to the garage and master suite (pics of master will come once I get it completely situated).

Living room from the top of the stairs

Living Room View 2

Living Room View 3

Playroom.  This is supposed be the formal dining room, but we don’t have anything to put there and it works perfectly as a play area.

Kitchen View 1

Kitchen View 2

Breakfast Nook / Sun Room (Off of the kitchen)

These barstools came with the house.  They are a little short, but I think they are really cute.

The Office

I thought the bookshelves came out really cute. (Yes, I am aware that there are no pictures in the frames, its on the list.)

This organizer came from our bedroom closet in the old house.  It is working really well for holding all that odds&ends office stuff.

The office is a work in progress.  I need to get about 5 more of the towers from IKEA to put all of our DVD’s and CD’s in. I don’t like the idea of them all sitting out in the office, but right now, I have to work with what I’ve got.  Any suggestions for an attractive way to store them?

Guest Bathroom

Wendy’s Room View 1

Wendy’s Room View 2

Wendy’s finished bumper pads

and bolster pillow (I designed the and my mom made them).

Ella’s Room View 1

Ella’s Room View 2

Ella’s Room View 3

Ella showing off her room!

Ella’s very own bathroom.  She is very excited.  Technically her room is the master, so she has a 3/4 bath.  Which is never uses, because it does not have a tub, but she still thinks its pretty spectacular. If you come over to our house one of the first things you will hear is, “Come and see my new bathroom!” 

           

Our backyard is huge! We are very excited for the girls to be able to play out there next spring.  And Briana is excited about volleyball.:-)

So, that’s the house for the most part. Hope you enjoyed the in-depth tour.  I don’t blame you if you skipped through it.  Most of that was for my grandma. :-)

                                               

2.  We did Halloween and it was lots of fun!

Our beautiful pumpkins that we got at the Thomason family pumpkin patch…super fun, I will post photos when I get them from my mom’s camera.

Yes, this took FOREVER! But I am really pleased with the way they turned out.  I think it was definitely worth it. It was very easy, just time consuming.

We had an impromptu and informal Halloween party at our house.  Impromptu in that we decided to have it three days earlier and informal in that there was absolutely no plan, no decoration and no food (or at least that was the plan), turns out I’m not good at not having any food…I bought tons of candy, made chicken pockets, an indoor s’more bar, and popcorn balls.  The Jensen’s also brought a ton of food.  All in all I would say it was a huge success.  If you didn’t hear about it I’m sorry, but like I said…super short notice.  I am looking at doing a winter party and if I do, you are all invited :-)

Ella was a ballerina and Wendy was a butterfly.  I put Ella in her tutu, headband, tights and jewelry and told her she looked beautiful to which she replied, “Not yet mom! I need hair clippies.”

Then I asked her if she was beautiful now?, “Not yet.” She said.  Then she went in the office and found this pair of pink nerdy costume glasses i have and put them on.

“Now I’m beautiful!” She said.

She had a great time trick-or-treating.

She wanted to push the button all by herself.  The old man above is our very nice British neighbor.  Him and his wife were very sweet.

We made the long and treacherous walk to Mrs. Emme’s for trick-or-treating. (They live a block away)

Of course we went to Grammie and Papa’s, we did the majority of our trick-or-treating in their neighborhood.

We had a great time on Halloween, hope you had a fun and safe time as well.

3.  We had Wendy’s MRI at children’s hospital and everything went well(ish).

Wendy’s MRI was very successful.  She had no problems with the aenesisa, which was a huge blessing.  They had warned us that it may take up to half an hour for her to wake up, but she was awake before she even made it back to the room.  Our doctor’s and nurses were all great and made us feel really comfortable.  The results of the MRI showed that Wendy does have a small cyst in her cerebellum, but that everything is forming normally around it and it should not cause her any complications in the future.  This caused a huge sigh of relief, because now we no longer have to worry about hydrocyphalus or dandy-walker.  That being said, Wendy is like her mother and can’t just be normal.  A few months ago my mother and I discovered a large bump on Wendy’s head that had not been there before.  She hadn’t fallen or anything, so we were concerned and confused.  We called Children’s Hospital and they told us to take her to the local urgent care, so that’s what we did.  The doctor at urgent care told us that Wendy was fine, she just had an irregularly shaped head.  We thought it seemed weird, but we were fine with it.  However, after the MRI Wendy’s neurosurgeon discovered that the bump in actually a large cyst that is “sitting on” Wendy’s brain. This cyst is not IN her brain, there is  a layer of bone between her brain and the cyst, so there is not a risk of it interfering with her development.  That being said, there are 3 options with a cyst like this. 1- It will stay the same size – in which case her skull will form normally around it and nothing needs to be done.  2- It will shrink and possibly even go away – nothing would need to be done. 3 – It will continue to grow – in which case it will need to be surgically removed.  We are fairly certain that it is growing and will have that confirmed in a few months.   If they do decide to remove it, it will require drilling a hole in her skull in order to remove the cyst ( I know sounds scary right, but they assure me that it is not as scary as it sounds).  They would like to do this before she is a year old, because that leaves a bigger chance that her own skull will grow in over the hole.  If they wait until after she is a year old they will have to graft bone from another place on her skull to cover the hole (this does not sound like an ideal choice to me…I would prefer what cut in my daughters head, not two)

So…that is the long winded news about Wendy and everything else that is going on in her lives.  I have some fun projects that I am hoping to get to soon and as I complete them I will share them with you.  I am sure a lot of other important things happened during my long absence from the blogosphere, so if you think of anything you want to know about or see pics of, just let me know.

Don’t blame me if you are exhausted and overwhelmed with information.  I warned you that it was VERY long!