Well Santa surely came to our house. It was amazing how much he decided to leave for these kids. In the past weeks it has been somewhat questionable on whether the kids were going to get coal or presents. I guess they squeeked out some presents.

Cooper was the first one up this morning. He got up at 5:45 AM and somehow made it into the living room without us knowing. He came back with a big Tonka Bulldozer (Huge Yellow Scoopy) and said, “Yanta come! Bring Choo-Choo train table.” We were able to open the dozer and lock him in his room for a half hour, but then he started to bang on the door. That awakened Emma. They were very excited to see all of what Santa brought. Emma got a princess bike that she loves. They got a lot more, as you can see.

There are more pictures to be seen here.

We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. Thank you for all of your gifts. We love ‘em.

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We enjoyed the first snow here in Missouri the day before Thanksgiving. The kids loved playing in our winter wonderland. They, however, are not properly outfitted for the winter. Having lived their entire lives in New Orleans they have not acquired too many long sleeved shirts, pants, coats, hats, gloves or boots. The lack of boots ended up being the biggest problem. Their feet got quite cold and wet, but that didn’t slow them down too much. As you can see from the pictures they enjoyed themselves. There are more pictures to be enjoyed in our photo album, click here to see them.

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Our little Meg is a month old now. She is doing great. She has slept for 7-8 hours a couple of times, unfortunately it isn’t at the same time we would like it to be. She usually is up until 12-1 AM and then sleeps. Cooper always gets up at 6 AM. We are all adjusting though. We are happy to have her here, even if it means less sleep for us.

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So things are going well here. We have had a busy couple weeks. Grandma Kate came and was a big hit with the kids. They were very excited to have her here. We were very happy to have the help.

We also had our friends, The Borgs, come visit us from New Orleans. We had a blast with them as well. Having 6 kids running around (OK, 2 of them are babies so they weren’t running, but they were around) was pretty hectic. Too bad the weather wasn’t better.

Now we have Grandma Reeder here. The kids are very excited to show off for another week. We once again are very happy to have the help.

As most of you know our new little angel has a couple of heart defects. She has small VSD and a stenotic pulmonic valve. We went to the cardiologist and got good news. Meg’s PDA was closed, which was expected. Her VSD (the hole between her ventricles) is really small. It is in a spot that is less likely to close on it’s own, but because of it’s size it may. If it doesn’t then it still won’t likely cause many problems because it is so small. Her valve is still stenotic, but it doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem. As she grows it will hopefully open up and not cause a problem. If it does cause problems they will have to put a catheter in and blow up a balloon to expand it. She has been doing great though. She doesn’t turn blue and we hardly ever worry about it now. We are very thankful for all of your prayers for her!

We have finally gotten a new digital camera so we will put more pictures up. Here are a few and more of Meg can be seen here and for pictures of the kids go here

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There are some changes to the site. After getting several hundred spam comments we’ve had to make some changes. In order to comment now you need to register with TypeKey.com. It’s free and is just a way to keep the spammers away. If you have signed up for someone else’s site, then it will work for ours too. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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Get out and vote! I am.

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Well we hope you have a wonderful day. Already 9! Amazing. I guess we are both getting pretty old. I am just 20 years ahead of you. We look forward to seeing you. Your new neice can’t wait to meet you.

Here are a couple of pictures from the last time we saw you. Ahhh good ol’ New Orleans. Gotta love those begneits and the swamp tour.

Have a great day!!

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We hope you all had a wonderful Halloween. We had a good night at the church for Trunk or Treat last night. We didn’t go out tonight, but we had a few people brave the rain and stop by. The kids thought it was pretty cool.

Well as you can see Cinderella, Pooh Bear and the Pumpkin had a great day. You can see more pictures here.

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Meg and Kristin finally made it home, but not without some drama. It was noted by the doctors that Meg had a heart murmur. They and I thought it was a PDA (patent ductus arteriosis) which is a remnant of fetal circulation. It is common and usually closes in a day or so. The docs decided to get an echocradiogram to look at her heart and make sure there was nothing else going on. Well the doctors were partially right.

It turns out Meg did have a PDA, but that was only part of the story. The echo also showed she has a couple other heart defects. She has a ventricular septal defect. This means there is a hole in heart between the two ventricles. This allows blood to cross over. Depending on the pressures it can cause deoxygenated blood crossing over and going through the peripheral circulation without going through the lungs first. It is a small hole as far as we can tell now, and has about an 80% chance of closing on it’s own by a year or 2.

She also has a dysplastic pulmonic valve. This is the valve between the right ventricle and the lungs. It is just not a good valve. It causes some obstruction of the blood flowing out, but then also doesn’t close well so some blood can flow back. This may not be too much of a problem either. As she gets bigger the obstruction may decrease. No way to tell right now. She may ultimately need to have a balloon placed in there to expand it.

So we were surprised with the news, needless to say. The cardiologist told us not to worry too much. We would just follow up with him in a week or 2 and then see how things go. She has been doing fairly well. The problem is that when she eats sometimes she turns blue. She has been getting better, but the first couple times that happened it sort of freaked us out. Kristin called the cardiologist who said not to worry. She has been doing it less frequently now, which is good. She is just our little smurf. We hope she grows out of most of this, but we will just have to wait and see.

You can see more picture of our beautiful girl, here

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