Happy Christmas!!

For Christmas we went up to Idaho to spend time with my family. We had a wonderful time. Luke especially loved all the attention by his grandparents. We played the first couple of days and had a beautiful dinner on Christmas Eve. Luke loved dinner. He is very fond of mashed potatoes and vegies. At one point he lost a mouthful and it stuck to his chin for the rest of the meal. We thought it was so funny we had to take a picture. He was confused at what we were laughing at. But he was so good. That night we read the Christmas story and open our family gifts Luke got this rocker form his grandparents. But we also added something new this Christmas. Grandma and Kim bought Luke a very cute Santa suit we had a lot of fun with that on Christmas Eve. It was so funny. I have probably 50 or 60 pictures of him in his little suit. Fun Fun Fun. Then we had a lovely Christmas morning, luke got mad crazy fun presents, I got my apron and Andrew and I got snow tires. That was a blessing because we had a rather terrifying ride home the next day with really bad roads:-) But we are home safe! And excited to enjoy the rest of the holidays here in Provo. Andrew is officially graduated. We are still looking for a job so if anyone hears of any openings in PR let us know.

My Amazing Little Man

Special Thank You to Kevin
who provided the Peruvian hats

Yea for Luke!!!He is pretty much my Little Super Hero! Friday Luke had both of his Peep (Provo Early education Program) appointments. Both his OT and PT came and worked with him and it was really great. Luke had been staying about two months behind developmentally until a couple of months ago when he started to fall farther behind, at one point his gross motor skills were almost 4 months behind. That was really discouraging, crawling just didn't come naturally to our little guy and he had some sensory issues that we were working on. It's been interesting to watch his progress and how discouraging and sad it had been for me at the beginning. I am so grateful that those feelings begin to go away and over time you see it how it really is. That we are so Lucky to have him, every child is different, and he is amazing and doing amazing things. Like I said, He is pretty much My Super Hero:-)

But while I had my surgery my little man did almost a whole month of catching up both in sensory and in gross and fine motor skills. He is crawling, waving, pulling up to kneeling and eating mashed table food. All of which he had not been doing at our last apt. But he seems to do most things this way. Take it easy for a while and then learn a whole bunch of things all at once. It was a really great day, they told me that they didn't think they needed his OT anymore and she would just come on a need basis. So the PT will still come to work with us on his low muscle tone and gave me some great new exercises to help him learn to stand ad increase his sensory.
Yea!!
Oh he also got his first little battle wound. He was trying to pull himself from crawling to kneeling and caught the edge of his eye on the table. This is when it was red but it turned into a great bruise later!

Christmas Cousins

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Getting all better!

I am now tonsil and adenoid-less. It has been a little over a week and all is going well. I have to admit it has been a little bumpier road than I anticipated but I think it has all gone really well. My mom came into town on the 3rd and we went out that evening with my brother Kevin for (what the nurse later joked as) "my final meal" and I went in to surgery at 7 on Thursday.

We had only planned on taking my tonsils out but when they got into my surgery my adenoid tissue was also badly infected so they decided to take that out too. We went to an outpatient surgical center owned by a group of doctors, that way we were able to avoid the overhead costs of a hospital. I really liked it there. It was very low-key but very efficient. In and out and very informative. But it was my first time going under all the way and I had some very interesting reactions after. We couldn't talk about it because it would make me laugh and trying to laugh hurt so much. But apparently I woke up crying, very hard and saying "Thank You" to everyone I saw. I kept trying to get out of bed and thank every random person that passed my door. I believe my exact quote to my nurse was "Thank you, Thank you so much for being nice. And mean people aren't nice and you are nice. I bet your children are nice" This was followed by many other humorous quotes which I won't go into now but I am sure my mother will share with you if you would like to hear about it. It was really funny:-)

I had heard all these horror stories about how much it hurt and how miserable the recovery was suppose to be. I think I was very blessed my pain didn't seem that bad (thanks to my wonderful narcotic) and I was so lucky to have so much help. But I understand what they mean by 4-7 days after is the worst part of the recovery. The scabs begin to fall off and you start getting some really powerful inner ear pain. But the worst part for me was the nausea that accompanied this. I had had the stomach flu the day before I went into surgery and I already have a week stomach so I think I was just set up for it. It also didn't help that both medications cause nausea. It was Ok for the first 3 or 4 days, I through up only a few times. But from Sunday afternoon on I was unable to keep anything down, even water. It was wretched. I was starting to get dehydrated and it was a blessed hour when we were finally able to get the anti-nausea medication on Monday morning. So from then on its been looking up.

My mom left to return to Idaho yesterday and Luke and I are kickin' it here by ourselves. I am doing good. My face is still really swollen, and I still can't talk. But I am pretty much up and about and doing most things. I still get really tired and have to take it easy and sleep lots. I can't tell if that is because of the medication or because I just don't have the energy. Eating is the worst. Nothing sounds good and everything hurts. I eat a frozen Ensure in the mornings, lots of water and I suck on saltines for most of the rest of the day. But hey, at least I am not even tempted to eat all the Christmas sweets in my kitchen.

Thanks for all the help and phone calls. We really appreciate it. Andrew is done!!! Yea!!! he takes his last test on Monday and it is so good to see so much of the stress off his shoulders. Well for now we are staying in Provo and continuing the job hunt. Andrew is working at Red Robin in the mean time and we hope to be moving to our new job sometime in January.

I love smiling! Smiling's my favorite!

Ho ho ho everyone. Tis the season and all that... Alright, so Kristi does most of the posting around here, but I felt it was time I contributed a little and shared the seasons greetings with you all. (A special thanks to Amy Shreeve, whose blog gave me the idea in the first place.)

So, without further ado, please allow your friends the Hills to be the first to wish you a Merry Christmas this year.

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"I don't want to take a picture, I just want my book!"

For Thanksgiving we drove up to Andrew's parents to celebrate. But while were finishing things up, we set Luke in the middle of the floor with his very favorite book, "Mirror Me Baby Einstein". He was dressed all cute so we thought a book was the best option for the moment. But before we left I wanted to take a few pictures. Alas, Luke did not take kindly to having his book taken away. He decided that he did not want to have his picture taken. So in the end we got a little smile when we held up the book in front of him. But the little stinker closed his eyes.

















We're doing great, applying for jobs and getting ready to graduate in two weeks!!! Yea! We are also excited for my Mom to come up this week. I am getting my tonsils out of Thursday, so she will be staying for a week or so to help me with Luke.