Join us in the adventures of our family, with our Belarussian Prince, Guatemalan Princessa and Ukrainian Princesses!


Saturday, April 9, 2011

Another day another cast :)

While waiting for the taxi the girls raided read the information about our area

Victoria and Gracie (another RR kiddo!!)

Bryson and Gerri, 2 amc'ers finally meeting!!!
 My good friend Sally and I finally got to meet after 5 years of emails and then neither of us thought to get a picture together!!! Thank heavens we will see her again in 2 weeks.
Every time we go to clinic the IPOD's are a big hit!

It is like a big reunion each week :)

After having her cast removed we headed on up for lunch. Even though it does not hurt to have her casts taken off, Gerri gets more upset each time. It took 2 aides to get them off, 1 on each leg. She moves around so much that it makes it even more difficult. Part of it is that her skin is getting more sensitive and the vibration bothers her. She is not scared of it, she has had so many removed. But she was almost hyperventilating, I finally got her calm by making her focus on my face and counting and doing the abc's. It is nice that we have a break between cast off and cast on.
We had lunch with Nikki and baby Monroe!! The girls loved her!

I know this is blurry - but I love that it that Monroe is looking right at me through her toy :)

Sharing snacks :)

stretching her feet and standing up after cast removal

look at this foot!!!! Gerri was SO excited to FEEL her ankle bone just like ours!!!

This is the ankle that the other Dr broke, it looks SO much better!!


We had a great meeting with Dr Vb. He showed us her xrays. The movement of the little bones is amazing! And these xrays were taken after only 3 casts. He said he wants to keep on casting till we hit a plateau, but he feels very confident that we can avoid the fixators on her feet! She will still need the hip surgery but it makes for a much quicker surgery just doing her hip. We are also going to get appts to see the hand and upper extremity Dr's :)
I asked him about coming up every week for the next 4-6 weeks and we might have a new plan :)
For families that travel he does casting 2 x's per week, monday and friday. SO we are looking at coming up on Friday early morning and staying till Monday late night. That way Gerri would be casted Monday and Friday and she would still get 4-6 more casts, but it would take half the time and half the travel. This will not start till the end of April, but it will help us get through it!!

The taxi ride back to the hotel with Doc - our friendly tour guide/taxi driver :)
We were a bit punchy as we had been at Shriners from 9 to 5!

Gerri showing Victoria how to say ohm for yoga

goof ball eating chicken nuggets :)

the blue's band setting up! They were very good!
 
yes, the skirts and coloring!!
 After dinner the girls put their pj's on and their skirts and we went downstairs to play with Amanda and Kellen :)
The girls just loved Kellen!!! they danced for him!!
We ended up staying up late, but the girls had SO much fun!
Today is a down day, we don't fly out till 3:30, so we will head to the airport soon to head home.
Good luck to Danny!! he has council pine derby races today!!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Back in Philly again :) and GREAT news!!!!

Don't know why - but they both LOVE the airplane safety instructions

Then it was time for Barbie war

The girls were SO excited to see Sammy :)

We stopped at Mcd for a snack and to gross out Sammy :)

Ms Becky had something special for the girls


These skirts are SO beautiful!! They have not taken them off since!
Thank you Ms Becky!! you can see the love in every stitch!
 We could not get into either of the rmh houses - so we decided to try a different hotel. This one is in Cherry Hill (a very nice area!!) and they give a discount for families that can not get into rmh!!
There is even a pool - but we did not bring suits! next time :)
We had awesome live music :)

very happy to color

just chillin!

Helping each other color
Just as I was getting ready to shutdown the computer and go to bed I got an email!!
I had emailed Dr vB the other day to see if he had looked at her xrays yet and it was killing us having to wait!! He emailed tonight to tell me that he had just pulled up her xrays and he cannot wait to show us tomorrow!! He said "WOW" those bones are moving!!! It means more casting, but there is a very good chance she will not have to have external fixators!!!!
ptl!! This is such amazing news :)

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

2 Princesses!



Yes, Danny got a bike, but the girls got princess dresses and brush!!
Much more important!

Packing again!

Duct tape before going back to school!!

Her casts get SO chewed up!

Danny's new big bike!!
 Danny was SO excited about his new bike. He had a hard time getting used to it. After his first lap down the street he wa sobbing:

Victoria ran to his side to hug him and tell him it was ok
 I hugged him and asked him what was wrong. He said, it is my first time it is hard! I asked, did you get hurt? fall down? not like it?? no was his answer. I said do you want to try again? he said yes!

Trying to race her brother!

The smile says it all!!

Gerri gets her own ride back to the house :)

Modeling their new helmets and showing off their phones!

Head to head competition
Yes, I am packing today for our next trip to Philly!! We leave tomorrow and get home Saturday.
I still have not heard back on her xrays, so I guess we will find out Friday!
Victoria is going with us and the girls are already planning on what they will play with!!
We are meeting another AMC family, the Reed's. I am SO excited!! Sally and I have been email buddies for almost 5 years!!! We met while using the same agency in Guatemala in 2006!!!

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Our Journey to Geraldine at OneTrueMedia.com

1 year home today!!! my how she has changed!!! love you honey!!

school starts monday!!! :) :)

We have played some video games

We had to replace our gates

of course in the rain!

Danny loves to help!

We have done lots of puzzles!

Lots of coloring!
I had to see the elbow Dr and got a REALLY painful shot IN my elbow and now have a new accessory

Relaxing in the sunshine, eating raisins

A swinging contest!

Playing with some cricket they found

Danny had a rough day yesterday with the change over in his meds, so we tried to keep him busy

While the girls painted

Then they colored outside (yes - it is mid 70's)

Danny took some pics
I had him vacuuming too!
This change over in meds has been harder than we thought. Coming off the narcotic stimulant was tough! Every time we couldn't find him we would find him sleeping somewhere.
Thank heavens we started the changeover during vacation and NOT during a school week!
He seems to be better today :) Still a bit tired and grumpy, but no where near as bad as yesterday!

Today marks 1 year since Gerri joined our family at home!!!
Can not believe it has been a year already!! time has gone by SO fast!

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Spring Break!

 The weather has been absolutely yucky!!! It has been cool, cloudy and rainy since the kids got out of school last Thursday! But we have been finding things for them to do! We have been doing Animal Yoga every morning!
Being elephants!
We made these twirly thing you throw in the air and they twirl around as they come down

Danny added some weight and it was binging off the ceiling!!

We made sugar cookies

We bought hula hoops and they have been practicing!

We bought "Tangled" and watched it - SO cute!!
We drove over to St Augustine yesterday just to do something! Too wet to get out on the beach :(
We had dinner at a really cute little italian restaurant.
Today we met nana for lunch, dropped off some donations and some consignments, did some shopping!!
Tomorrow will probably be a library day :)
Man! Monday can not come soon enough!!! Especially when it is raining!!!

Since we knew Danny would be off this week we started phasing in his new medication last week. We are weaning him off the narcotic medicine he was on and putting him on something is NOT a narcotic. This should also help with his appetite and his weight loss from the other medication. He has been much more emotional, which is expected, so we saved it for this week! Hopefully by Monday he will be in full swing with the new medicine.

I also snagged this picture off Carolyn's blog :)
Nancy, Gerri, Madeline, & Carolyn :)
This proves that I was there!! :) You can see Gerri and I were a bit tired! (and this was taken at 10:00 am!)