New York

I went to Olean, New York to visit my sisters this past weekend. I flew out on Wednesday, April 21st. I flew through Charlotte, North Carolina which was exciting because I haven’t been to North Carolina before. Julie and Kristilyn flew in from Utah that night too.

We spent the weekend playing with Daniel and Anna, cooking, cleaning, playing games, and talking. I borrowed part of Julie’s blog that gives a quick update on Daniel and Anna.

Anna (14 months) needs a lot of attention with all of her special needs. She has a feeding tube in her stomach and Katrina has to hook her up about every 4 hours. She also has a lot of other seizure medications that have to be taken at certain times as well. Anna has little seizures throughout the day and at least a couple bigger ones even with the medication. Even though she is 14 months, she looks like she’s about 6-7 months old and has the developmental level between 2-4 months. She has an occupational therapist, a vision therapist, and another therapist that come in the mornings once a week and Katrina is working on getting some respite care so she can have time to get other things done like grocery shopping, cooking, etc. Anna can’t sit up by herself, but she can kind of support her head and turn it somewhat. She has the most beautiful brown eyes, cute button nose, and soft curly hair. She feels good to hold and doesn’t cry very often anymore.

Daniel (almost 4) is just as bouncy and energetic as ever, and just as adorable. He loves to be outside, so we spent a lot of time walking around the block or following him on his big wheel around the block when it was both sunny and rainy. He likes to tease and say, “Come on.” He’s also being potty trained right now and trying to have “perfect days” so he can go to McDonalds. He was really pretty good the whole time we were there. His favorite movies are “Mr. Kruger’s Christmas” and “The Restoration.” He has a lot of other cartoon movies, but doesn’t want to watch them. He likes to dance to music, play basketball in the back yard, and play kid computer games. He’s very social and doesn’t like to be alone. He would prefer to do everything with a buddy, and we took turns being that buddy for the whole weekend!

Daniel is so sweet and caring. As we were leaving Olean, Anna was upset to be in her car seat and was crying. Katrina held her hand and she quickly quieted down. As we drove to the airport, I started to cry realizing I wasn’t ready to leave yet. Daniel, who was sitting in front of me, heard me cry. He held up his hand and told me I could hold his hand. It made me cry harder. While I was there I was sneezing a ton because of allergies. I also cut my finger open. Daniel asked me at least once a day how my finger was and how I was feeling. He is very observant to others’ feelings.

The weekend wouldn't be complete without a crazy sleep walking event. On Sunday night I had a weird dream. In my dream I was in bed and I pushed the blankets onto the floor. As I did, I heard a baby cry. I got so stressed out because I thought I had just pushed a baby off the bed. In reality I was sitting on the bed and then stood up on the bed. Julie woke up and said my name. It kind of woke me up but not fully. I said "Help!" three times. She sat up and grabbed my arm and pulled me down onto the bed again. I was so stressed out. I laid there for a minute and then I realized I probably scared Julie so I tried to explain my dream but realized that it didn’t make sense and I didn’t really understand why I was so stressed out. It was so weird. I don’t think I have slept walked since being married. I guess I was just over tired.

Dear Melody

Dear Melody,

How have you been? I'm just fine, thanks for asking. A touch busy at times, but so are you, I hear.

I'm writting you to let you know that I have a couple of concerns that we need to address before they get out of hand.

First of all, we need to sit down and have a serious conversation about that blog of ours. I know that it's a sore subject around here, and I know that you think that it's my responsibility, but all this arguing back and forth about who is going to write the next post really isn't getting us anywhere. Do you know how long it's been since we updated? November. No really, November. You can take a look for yourself if you don't believe me.

Second, why so camera-shy lately? It must be your inner native-american that thinks that the camera is going to steal your soul. I have trouble repressing my inner native-american at times, too. How about this, I promise that if the camera ever steals your soul that I'll make it give it back to you straight away, honest.

Lately though, it's been getting out of control. I mean, I keep trying to get a picture of your new hair cut, but if you continue to dodge the camera or put your hand in front of the lens, your hair will grow back by the time I get a decent shot. So, I decided to take the matter into my own hands. Since you won't let me take a picture of you, I decided to have a local artist draw a sketch of you with before and after takes of your new 'do. I think that the results are fairly stunning:

Before	After

That's all for now. Talk to you soon.


Love, Brandon

As of late...

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a great week. We both went to school and work Monday through Wednesday. On Thursday, I made crescent rolls, candied yams, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and a vegetable tray. We ate Thanksgiving with our friends the LaBau’s. They made turkey and rotisserie chicken, more potatoes and rolls, green salad, pomegranate salad, chocolate pie, and pecan pie. We ate and then played Cities and Knights. Ethan (almost 2) provided most of the entertainment and wore Brandon out.

On Friday we went to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. They had Harry S. Truman’s coin collection, random bits of information, we saw Huey, Dewey, and Louie (unmanned, yellow, robotic trucks) moving the money from room to room since they don’t want people to move the money. On the way out they gave us $165 in shredded US currency. It wasn’t the most exciting museum but it was free and a place to go that wasn’t full of holiday shoppers.

Improving leaps and bounds from our tree last year, we also set up the Christmas tree that we bought after Christmas last year. Since we bought it in an after-Christmas sale, it has just been sitting in our storage for nearly a year building suspense, and this was the first time we saw it out of the box. It is a 6.5 foot pre-lit tree. We have silver tinsel and silver and blue ornaments.

On Saturday we had beautiful weather so we ate a picnic lunch and walked around our favorite park. The weather was so nice that we were comfortable in short sleeve tee-shirts. That won't last long, no doubt. We also spent our free time reading The Giver by Lois Lowry to each other. Neither of us had read the book in school so it was an interesting short read for our vacation time.

Also, on November 16th we went to AMF bowling lanes with Alec, Amber, and Ethan. We bowled for 2 hours and had a lot of fun. My legs were sore for days. We didn't get our best bowling scores ever, but we were sure happy to get out of the house for a bit.

Halloween

We have more to pictures to show everyone from our Halloween festivities. It seems like it is always feast or famine when it comes to updating this blog; hopefully no one minds. We tried to get a couple of pictures of us playing in front of the black-light but, as you can imagine, they didn't turn out so well, so all we have to show for the holiday is pumpkin carving.

I really think I've found my calling in life with this. It's too bad they don't have professional pumpkin carvers, because if it could support a family I just might drop out of medical school to go to pumpkin carving school. Too bad. It might not look like much this year, but give me a few more years and I'll be a natural.