King Family: November 2009

Sunday, November 29, 2009

why bother?

why bother.. has been my attitude regarding housework as of late....
i gave Maggie a few chocolate chips to eat while she was watching a movie the other day -
ended up with this

seriously like five chocolate chips...how can five chips make that mess?? **sigh**

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

My friend Deanna and I took our girls (Jensen and Maggie) to "Sesame Street Live" in Green Bay last Friday. It was during the day so all of our other children were in school.
We had a great time...thanks to Deanna for inviting us and managing to get front row seats. It was so fun to take the little ones to do something together. Jensen is an absolute sweetheart and Maggie was beyond excited to spend he day with her.

Here are the girlies...snacking on goldfish, getting ready for the show.

such cute friends

and then we saw lots of this action...wahoo...

at the end the girls ran around gathering up confetti and putting it in Deanna's purse...

which they thought was loads of fun ! :)

altogether a great day :)

Friday, November 20, 2009

Playin' with Elin

Maggie's friend Elin came to play the other day.

They had such a great time together I had to take a few photos of their cuteness.

Here they are playing on top of Jaxon's bed.

pretending to be asleep...very convincing

Elin Bug

Miss Maggie

Swingin'

and crunching in the fall leaves

as soon Elin walked out the door Maggie was saying "I need my Elin back" the rest of the afternoon. so fun to have good friends

nativity drawings

Lia gave our family night lesson Monday.

She talked about the 1st Christmas and for part of the lesson had us all draw a picture.

Here is our tribute...in crayon.

The kids are sweet, Ty's is comical (seriously had a bit of trouble with the guy walking behind the sheep), and mine is just kind of boring. :)

Hopefully it will help us remember the reason for the season! :)

JAX

LIA

KEL

School Conferences

We had Parent Teacher Conferences the 2nd week of November.

Lia and Jaxon are having a great time in 1st grade & Kindergarten.

I love their school and feel so blessed with the teachers they have this year, it was nice to visit with them both for a bit.

We were given some of the kids cute classwork to take home...which you will see below.

I am in charge of staff appreciation for PTO. It is my job to organize meals for the teachers during the two days of conferences. I don't have quite as many volunteers as I would like and so the amount of food I made during those two days sort of makes my head spin.

Lets just say it is a week I'm glad has come and gone.

My kitchen looked something like this all week.......

and as I was cooking my kids were entertaining themselves by making ginormous messes

...good times

Here is some of the school work we brought home :

Lia: a note to the parents -

some of her journal entries -

Jaxon: a self portrait -

some info. about himself

a transportation book -

i thought his choices in modes of transport would thrill grandpa steve :) rocket.airplane.helicopter

they made these after reading the book "ten apples up on top"

....i love how she had them look up at the apples in the picture

Thursday, November 12, 2009

new neckwear

On November 4th we took Jaxon to another appointment with is neurosurgeon in Iowa. Grandpa Jim (Tyler's dad) was nice enough to come visit us for the week an watch the girls while we were traveling.

Jaxon had a couple MRI's in the morning. One with his head leaning back and the other with his chin to his chest. The doctor was trying to see how much the kinking of his brain stem/spinal cord changed with flexion and extension. Jax had to be put to sleep for the MRI's because they take quite a while. One of the worst parts of the day was when they were trying to put his IV in to give him the anesthesia. They had to try three different spots and it took forever. Jax hung in until they were trying for the third time...and then the tears came. Finally they got it going though, I was so proud of him for being such a trooper. We met with Dr. Menezes after the MRI's. He told us that unfortunately there wasn't enough change between the two MRI's that he felt physical therapy or a rigid collar would be helpful in Jaxon's case. He also told us that Jaxon will (at some point) need two different surgeries. One where they go in through his mouth and remove part of his 1st vertebrae, and the other where they remove some of his skull in the back of his head to relieve pressure on the brain. When they are done doing both of those they fuse some of the bones together to give his neck and head more stability. Jaxon's symptoms are not any worse than they were a bit ago, and they would like him to grow as much as possible before his surgery. So for now we are just waiting to see how he does and watching for any symptoms that would indicate things are getting worse.

Dr. Menezes did give him a soft collar that he has to wear all of the time (except when he's asleep). He has never really complained about wearing the collar, but his 1st day back to school with it on he was terribly nervous. I went to drop him off an he wouldn't get out of the car. The staff at the school helped us out though. The principal and teachers aid came running out to talk to him and help calm him down. Finally after choosing some prizes from the principals treasure chest he started to calm down. Tyler came to the school too and held his hand as he walked into class. As soon as he got to class and could see that all his buddies were happy to see him he was fine. Ever since then school has been great and he doesn't seem to mind wearing his collar. We did make some cool covers for it (huge shout out to my friend Pam for helping me sew them....i love you! you are the best! ). We actually made them out of tights, which was a great tip I got from one of Jaxon's nurses. Once we got them made mom painted some logos on them, and now he likes the collar even more.

Here are a few pictures of the man with his new accessory. If all goes well we don't have to go back to the doctor till march 10! :)

covers

crafting a turkey

every year around thanksgiving the kindergartners design turkeys to adorn the hallways at school. they are given the template and they can decorate it any way they like. the rules being that you can't use any crayons, pencils markers etc.

Here is Jaxon's design...created entirely by him.

He chose to use a lot of candy wrappers...and loved eating the spoils as he went along. I remember posting Lia's turkey last year and wanted to make sure that i got his on the blog too!

a new coat

of paint that is....

I've been working recently on painting the girls room, I started forever ago and figured it would be nice to actually finish at some point. I'm still working on it, but for now here's a taste...

jaxon also informed me that he wanted a color on his walls. i told him that his wall were nice and tan, he responded by telling me that tan is not a COLOR!

so....he picked out a crazy shade of green!

And now it looks like this....

now he wants sports themed stuff on the walls to match his bedspread..so hopefully I will get that finished before we have company at Christmas time.

Laurie - do you see the quilt you made Jax.....so cute, love you!

So there you have it...just a little post about paint. Next I want to change the color in the kitchen...haven't told Ty about that plan yet...I'm sure he'll be thrilled.