Sunday, November 1, 2009

Halloween pics....

The kids had a great time trick or treating this year.  We went to a harvest party where they got candy and great prizes.  Then we went to our town's nursing home.  The residents line the halls and pass out candy.  I love to see their faces.  And they love to see the kids all dressed up.  Some of them almost seem giddy!!  After that, we went to some of our neighbors.....  The kids were tired, but a great time had by all.... Blitzen survived his first Halloween....He was a trooper, staying in his costume, parading around all around town!  Gotta love that dog!!!



All ready to go!!  Hannah is dorothy, Blitzen is Tin Man, Josiah is a knight, and Eli is a race car driver..




Acting silly!!!  How cute are they???




nice background at the harvest party...




At the nursing home...they were a BIG hit here...



the kids with their cousins, Audra and Emma...
Posted by at

1 comment:

Danielle said...

Love the 'tumes! And ironically if I'd had more energy I would have done the Wizard of Oz thing. Cause my mom keeps humming "if I only had a brain" to Trevy! lol We thought he'd make a great scarecrow!

...danielle

November 3, 2009 at 4:10 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Beautiful Hannah...

How this journey started....

Hannah was born prematurely at 34 weeks gestation. She was a relatively healthy preemie; initially having difficulty maintaining body temperature and needing to grow. She weighed 4 pounds 9 ounces at birth. When she was four months old she began to drool, non stop. We were told the first year she was "teething." At 18 months old, we really started searching for reasons of why her shirt was always soaking wet. We saw various specialists who always sent us to another specialist, saying "everything looks okay." She spent years in oral motor/feeding therapy to help her not to drool. It wasn't until she was four years old and in preschool that we started to get some answers. Her preschool teacher commented one day that she wasn't reponding when her name was called. I took this information to her pediatrician who then orderd an EEG, "just to rule it out." Much to our shock and amazement, the results showed, she was having seizures. That is the day our journey REALLY began. Once she began taking seizure medication the drooling almost stopped completely. (She will still drool to this day when she is having seizure activity). Since then, it has been a roller coaster; countless medications and medication changes. She has never really reponded well to any medication.

About two years after she was diagnosed with epilepsy, the doctors noticed that her blood pressure was running high. After many tests, she was diagnosed with hypertension. We still are not sure why, but her cardiologist feels her blood vessels are thicker than normal.

About this same time, we also began looking into why Hannah was such a horrible sleeper. She would thrash, talk, move every which way, during her sleep. The sleep studies revealed that she has alveolar hypoventilation sydrome, which means she has too much carbon dioxide in her system when she sleeps. To help this, she wears a BI-PAP at night. This has been monumental in giving her more effective and quality of sleep.

Every day is a challenge for Hannah and our family as a whole. Blitzen has been an absolutely wonderful addition. She calms herself sometimes just by petting and loving on him. He has been trained in behavior disruptions and will sometimes be able to stop a meltdown from getting out of control.
It has been extra hard on the whole family since daddy is deployed to Iraq. He has been gone since January 09 and will gone until Jan 2010. We get to talk with him by phone and on the web cam; which is nice, but not the same!! Blitzen has helped to make his absence go just a little smoother....