When I published a “Our Week in Pictures” post back in October, I had no idea it’d be so popular! Apparently people really enjoy seeing how other families do things.
So, here’s another “behind the scenes” peek into my family’s life. Ready to see what we’ve been up to lately?
ER Visits and Dr. Appointments
My son with special needs has had a rough couple of weeks! He’s pulled his g-tube out five times. Two of them weren’t that big of a deal. We realized right away what had happened, and placed it again.
But, three times he pulled it out during the night. And it stayed out for several hours.
This is long enough for the stoma to begin to close. Which meant we couldn’t get the g-tube back in.
So we headed to the ER. All three times.
The doctors and nurses were fabulous and used catheters to stretch the stoma until it was large enough to get the tube back in.
Not a fun way to spend 1/2 the day, but we are thankful for the help of the staff.
Now it’s time for a bizarre tale. And it’s true…
The Case of the Missing G-Tube
To set the stage, you can imagine some mystery music playing right about now, okay?
When Owen pulled his g-tube out this past Saturday, we couldn’t find it. It wasn’t in his bed. Or his pajamas. It hadn’t fallen to the floor or under his mattress.
It was just gone.
And I joked with the ER staff that he must have eaten it.
So they did an x-ray (because of Owen’s Pica). And low and behold, there was a mysterious object in the image. They didn’t know what it was, but agreed it was going to pass without intervening.
Guess what came out with his poo a few days later?
You guessed it – a nearly intact g-tube. I have no idea how my son manages to swallow such bizarre things, but he does. He is obsessed with eating non-edibles. And while we already knew that, this episode was the strangest we’d seen.
He took a tube out of his body and ate it…ew!
Just be thankful I’m not including a picture of that after it came out again :D. That’d be a gross picture.
But, here’s one that’s related to this story.
Owen’s surgeon was able to see him. We talked about trying a lower profile tube, which I think we’re going to go with. But while we were in the waiting room, Ellie played so nicely with Tyler. And it really brought back memories for me, since most of our kids have been in this waiting room at some time or another over the years. And we have pics of most of them in these cute cars.
Christmas Shopping
I do most of my Christmas shopping online. Hello Amazon Prime delivery and not bundling up 9 kids!
We keep Christmas simple around here with a variation of the 3-gift Christmas.
But, there are still some things I find at a better price point when I buy them in an actual store. This week, we went to the mall in addition to the stores we regularly visit. I had six of the kids with me, and they enjoyed a quick treat from Cinnabon.
I used to completely avoid the mall between Black Friday and January 2nd. But it was almost completely empty this trip, which surprised me a bit.But, it was much nicer than the huge crowd I was anticipating.
Cuddling Kittens
In September, the cat Luna that Bryan brought home from a customer at work gave birth to six kittens. It’s been an interesting thing to have kittens in the house. But, we kept all of them from getting squished by curious littles.
Recently, we transformed an out building into a kitten barn. It’s a lovely place for five of the kittens to go while they transition to being barn cats. We let our oldest daughter select one kitten to keep in the house.
She picked a cute white one and named her Stella. So we have Stella and Luna. 😀
The kids really love having pets both inside and out, and have spent lots of time cuddling kittens. I’m impressed at how well the kittens outside are adjusting. They are so cute and really had fun
Stella is doing well inside as well. Except that she loves our Christmas tree. It seems like each day the kids are pulling her down several times.
School
We’re finishing up school this week, and then taking a nice long Christmas break. What the kids don’t know is that they learn way more during break then they do while “doing school.” 😀 I love watching them learn as they play games, bake cookies, do art, and more.
This week, we’re tackling Colonial America. We read about them using oiled-paper for windows, so did an experiment to learn more. The oiled-paper let in way more light than regular paper.
The picture above shows Sydney smearing some olive oil on the paper. It was a messy experiment, which my kids all love!
Bagels + Books
Each Tuesday, we eat homemade bagels for breakfast. Tyler was so cute eating his bagel and “reading” a book that I had to take a picture. He’s reading the book Nothing, which I wrote a review about. You can find that here.
We’ve been trying to get more reading time into the day. Typically, we have a 15 minutes quiet reading time each morning after our family Bible time. It’s been a great way to have the kids read more books.
I’m currently reading two different books during this time:
- Burning Wicks (it’s the history of Baptist Mid-Missions)
- Everyday Millionaire (rereading this one!)
Addressing Christmas Cards
We had amazing family pictures taken a few weeks ago! Here’s one of them.
This was our first time having someone else take our family picture since we were a family of three…
But, when your husband takes great pictures and you’re living on a budget, there hadn’t been a need to hire a photographer.
Except we wanted a new picture to create new prayer cards for our ministry.
And we wanted all of us to be able to relax and not stress. So we decided it was time. And our photographer Susanna Brogan did a great job! We’re so thankful for all the images.
We took one (not the one above) and used it on our Christmas cards. Those arrived this week, so we started the process of addressing envelopes and getting some shipped.
Here’s a sneak peek…
What Have You Been Up To?
That’s a quick look at what our family has been up to this week. How about you – what have you been doing? I’d love for you to share in the comments!
