Celebrate Christmas Hallam Style!

Thanks to Chris for creating this...soooo funny!

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One little two little three little angels!

Grace had her first Christmas pagent this afternoon- it was adorable! She and the rest of her two year old preschool class (collectively known as "the Lions") were part of the "Angel Choir." Steve and I laughed so hard that tears were streaming down our faces...and we seemed to be in the vast minority. Some of the other parents are so intense! It's a bunch of two three and four year olds...you can't expect perfection! In the middle of singing "Ten little angels" Grace noticed her sparkly shoes and decided to check them out more closely. She sat on the stage and played with her shoes from about 4 little to 8 little angels, but was back on her feet in time for the grande finale! Being a parent is so entertaining!

Seconds...

Poor Noah. Grace rang in her one year birthday with much fanfare and applause, a party on the day and a lot of attention from Mom and Dad. Noah on the other hand had a different kind of day. He woke up, and mom and dad gave him his presents. One was a hammer toy, which he hasn't quite figured out, and the other was a tickle me cookie monster. We activated the cookie monster, and the room went silent. I wish I had had my camera handy, because I can't even describe the look on the kids faces. Noah's eyes were the size of saucers and Grace slowly backed away until she was hanging on Dad's leg. After the cookie monster was done seizing (the best way to describe what it did) we all kind of looked at each other and Grace whispered "thats so scary dada." Great start to the day. Noah had his morning nap, ate a quick lunch and then I had to go to school, so he went to the park with Mema Dada and Grace. Then, he got stuck in the car to run some errands, missed his afternoon nap and almost missed dinner because we got stuck in traffic. Steve had his seminar that afternoon, and then I had class that night, so the poor kid didn't even get a cake or a goodnight kiss from me. Not that he complained, he is such a sweet boy. Maybe next year will be better...

Happy birthday Noah and Abi!

Noah and Abi had a blast at their first birthday party! All of our friends and family gathered together at Hanger Park here in Tempe. Abi wasn't so into her cake, but Noah sure was! He dug into his cake (using one finger) and helped himself to hers as well! I can't believe my baby boy is a year old already- it sure flew!

Turkey Day!

We had a great Thanksgiving here in Phoenix! Everyone didn't arrive until this afternoon, so we had a wonderfully relaxing day. Marsha and I puttered in the kitchen while Steve and Curt took the kids for a long walk/nap. Then Steve's brother Chris, Chandra, and Abi arrived, as well as Chandra's sister and brother, Gill and Michelle. We had a great meal followed by a fun family photo session at the park. Oh- we made a really really good green bean dish with garlic and cherry tomatoes (check out the pic!) Grace and Noah love playing with Abi, the three of them are really funny together! Check back tommorow- we are having Noah and Abi's first birthday party, I will post pics of that for sure!

Arizona!

Well, we made it back to Arizona fairly uneventfully. Gracie watched Dora on her "baby tv" the whole flight and it took both Marsha and me to keep Noah entertained. We have been having fun catching up with friends and family here! So far Grace has gotten some good Dallas time (her bff) and Noah got a clean bill of health at the cardiologists! It's so fun to watch Dallas and Grace play now that they can communicate. At the park they played "Dora and Diego" (based on one of their favorite shows) and Dallas pretended to rescue Grace from different situations....sooo funny! There were too many park pics to put them all on here, so check out my facebook page to see them all. I am so excited for Steve to come tomorrow...I have been pretty tired. Unfortunately I tried to remedy that today with a triple shot peppermint mocha and now I can't sleep. Blast!

Noah Update

First of all, thanks so much to all of our friends and family for your prayers and support this past week! We feel so blessed to have such a great support system surrounding us, especially considering the relatively short time we have lived in Mill Valley. So for those of you who didn't hear, or only heard part, here's the scoop:
Noah got a cold (he puts EVERYTHING in his mouth so I am actually surprised this doesn't happen more often!)He started having a runny nose on Monday morning, and by the time he woke up from his nap Monday afternoon he was having trouble breathing. Steve and I got him through the night by using his nebulizer (breathing machine) and holding him most the night. We took him to the doctor first thing Tuesday morning where they gave him a steroid shot to try to keep the cold from getting worse and another breathing treatment. He seemed to improve a bit and when we took him back to the doctor that afternoon the doctor said we would just keep an eye on him and we made a follow up apt. for the next day. We put Noah to bed Tuesday night and he woke up around 9pm really having trouble breathing. Not wanting to risk anything, we took him to the emergency room (thank you Jason and Emily Hew for watching Grace so we could both go to the hospital!) and after watching him for a few hours (including another steroid shot and several more breathing treatments) they decided to admit him. Long story short, over the next few days we had several scary episodes, and lots of doctors in and out. Mainly, we knew that if we could get him over the cold he would be able to breathe fine, but we really wanted to get to the bottom of the problem so that this doesn't keep reoccurring. The doctors concluded that something about his airway is not quite right, and for whatever reason (possibilities include scarring from being intabated during heart surgery, acid reflux, laryngomalacia- "floppy" esophagus)when he gets sick the combination of the swelling from the cold and whatever else is going on is just too much and he has trouble breathing. So we have him on a preventative does of inhaled steroids twice a day through the cold season, and we will be doing a bronchoscopy in about a month so they can look down his esophagus and see what is going on. They already did a brief scope looking down as far as his vocal chords, and didn't see anything (good news!) but they think there may be something farther down that they could see with the bronchoscopy. Unless there is anything huge such as a lot of scarring, we wouldn't do anything except for wait for him to grow, and as his esophagus gets bigger hopefully the issues will go away. A lot more answers should be coming soon, but for now Noah is getting over his cold and definitely back to his normal goofy self. We flew to Phoenix today for Thanksgiving and a routine Echo cardiogram (which is good we had scheduled since some of the medicine he was on for his breathing can stress the heart). I will post briefly to let everyone know how the echo goes. Thanks again for all your prayers, I really don't know of any baby Noah's age who has had as many people pray for him as Noah has. I can't wait to see what God has planned for his life!