Thankful

Ella made a Thankful Tree at school, and wrote that she was thankful for mom, dad, Hannah, the cat, the car? and our neighbors, Mr and Mrs B (BEB).  Ella is obsessed with them, and first thing when she got home from her surgery, she kept begging for Mrs. B to come over.

Bye, Bye Tonsils

Ella had enormous tonsils, and we were concerned they were the cause of her lack of sleeping (night wake ups and up by 5am for the day).  When she started kindergarten, she was an exhausted mess without nap.  The ENT decided to do a sleep study, and it showed that Ella's sleep was being disturbed every 10 minutes and her throat was 75% obstructed.  After three opinions, all saying she should have them removed, we decided to move forward and scheduled her for tonsil and adnoid removal. 

Not surprisingly, Ella was a champ! We told her the night before that they needed to fix her throat and that it would hurt but she'd get ice cream.  She played happily at the surgery center, was a total ham in pre op and walked around with the nurses while she waited her turn.  She was all smiles right until she fell asleep from the gas.  Waking up from anesthesia was sad, but she cried for a few minutes while we changed her out of her hospital gown and fell right back to sleep.  She cried most of the drive home, and has been playing and happy since then. I'm sure tonight will be hard, but for now, she is in great spirits.  We are so thankful to all of our family and friends for the visits and thoughtful calls and presents. Ella is one VERY lucky girl!

Playing in the waiting room waiting to go back to pre op - thanks for the distraction, Linde and Bryan! We had to be there at 5:45am

Post op, she cried for a few minutes and fell right back to sleep

Hannah's sweet get well note to her sister

Ella playing in the tub with bath foam three hours after her surgery - this was her mood most of the day - happy and silly!

Fast asleep on her get well bear, "Tonsil" from Grammy Al and Papa Stevy

Flowers from her old teacher, Karen.   So very sweet, this made Ella's whole day.

I'm pretty sure Ella's going to ask to have more surgeries after all of the wonderful things she's received! This beautiful cookie bouquet came from some Roeper friends today.  We are so lucky to have such wonderful people in our lives.

Great Wolf Lodge

We took a short two day trip to Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky this weekend with Linde, Luke and Bryan.  The girls had a blast on the waterslides (and Luke grew to like them), and they all loved exploring the lodge.  Highlights were the Dunkin donuts, arcade (Jordan won Ella a giant ball which made her day), the ice cream parlor, the clock tower show and MagiQuest.  You may be wondering what that is, as we were when we blindly paid over $60 for the girls to get wands and play.  Despite initially feeling ripped off, the kids were all obsessed with this game.  You walk around the lodge and wave your wand at pictures and statues to collect items for your quest.  When you wave your wand, the items come to life by lighting up, playing videos and making noises.  There are various quests, which means we explored the lodge many, many, many times to find everything and complete the missions.  Ella fell asleep snuggling her wand tonight.

Jordan and Hannah headed back early so Hannah could make a presentation at school, so Ella and I enjoyed a leisurely morning eating our breakfast and sitting on our porch. Ella said, "mom, it's such a clear day I can see all the way to the Eiffel Tower!" (AKA, a water tower).

As we started packing up, Linde and I realized we had a miscommunication on the car seat situation, and had to run to Target to buy a seat for Ella. We just got a high back booster, and poor Ella had a rough nap home. Despite how uncomfortable she looked, she slept like this for almost the entire drive.

Ella left our dinner table and wandered over to the bar.  She sat there for most of our meal, and when I went to grab her, the bartender told me that we really needed to work on getting her to come out of her shell.  I guess she had been entertaining the bartenders on a quiet Sunday night.

MagiQuest

Yes, I know, not the safest option.

Snuggling her wand

Halloween Puzzle at School

Hannah's class did such a great job on their Halloween puzzle extravaganza.  They started out by singing a version of the Gilligan's Island theme song, and then explained that we were on a sinking ship and needed to find the hidden scuba gear to survive,  Each kid created a word puzzle, and the parents had to solve the puzzles.  Once the word puzzle was solved, you earned a puzzle piece.  Once the parents solved each puzzle, we assembled the puzzle which gave us clues to find the scuba gear to survive the sinking ship.  We succeeded and the kids were so proud!  It was such a fun morning.