Tearney's Newest Accessory

Tearney had an appointment with the doctor yesterday to check on her arm.  All is looking good, and it was time to switch to a new cast.  She got her wish......

 

Blue with a red stripe.  She LOVES it!   It was a pretty popular sight at the doctor's office.  Everyone was coming in to check it out.  I will say, colors aside, it is the coolest cast I have seen.  :-)

Christmas 2010 Highlights

Christmas 2010 was full of fun, traditions, and making new memories:

Mylee and her new baby

 

 Calder

 

 Tanner

 

 A tradition every year--Reading "The Night Before Christmas," and "The Polar Express."  This year, the kids read along with me.  :-)

   

Hanging the Santa Key outside on the mailbox so Santa can get into our house since we don't have a chimney.  VERY IMPORTANT!! :-)

Picture on the stairs.  They were all laughing at Willie, who was peeking through the French Doors.  Then, off to bed after getting a plate ready for Santa.

 Christmas morning--Santa was here!

 

Makenna

Tearney and her Go-Go Pet.

Jentree 

 

Mylee talking to Uncle Brent via Skype.  She was thanking him for the Elmo camera. 

  

It was great fun, and now for the clean up!!

First Wrestling of 2010-11

 Tanner and Calder participated in their first wrestling tournament for this season on Saturday.  It was in JC, so it was nice and close.  Both boys did well for it being their first outing.  Tanner even survived his first time wrestling a girl.  :-)  He wasn't quite sure what to do--he asked me, "What do I do, Mom?"  I told him to pretend it was a boy!  He won, so that ended up well.  ha!

Calder

 

Tanner

 

Showing off their hardware:  Tanner 2nd Place, Calder 4th Place.  Way to go boys!

Jentree's First Program

Jentree has been sooo excited this week for her very first Christmas Program.  She was PUMPED!!  She would practice her songs for anyone who would sit still long enough to listen.  So, today was the day in her mind.  She has sat through countless programs for her brothers and sisters, and her moment had arrived!!

 

 They performed a version of the Nativity, and she was Mary.  She took her role very seriously as you can see in the photo.

 

 She was so serious in fact, that baby Jesus was not wrapped in his swaddling clothes for a bit, and was wearing his birthday suit!  She got a little caught up in the whole moment, and apparently did not carry out her motherly duties!  haha!

 

It was a very cute program, and to top it off, she got to see Santa!!  Nothing could top that!

Third Grade Christmas Program Time

 Makenna had her 3rd Grade Christmas program tonight.  It was really cute, and very fun to watch.  She loves to sing, and even got to do a little dancing too!  She was also one of the narrators for the program and did a great job!

 

 Dancing away!

 

 All smiles after the concert.

Not Exactly The "Break" We Were Looking For!

Apparently things were way too quiet around here, so we thought we should liven them up a bit?!  Ugh.. Poor Tearney was the delegate chosen by her siblings to be the accident victim this time.  On Sunday, she fell off Jentree's bed, and broke her left arm.  One would think that perhaps she was acting out the whole, "Monkeys Jumping On The Bed" poem, but alas, no.  Just was trying to step off the bed, and her foot got caught on the footboard (how aptly named!), and down she went.  Poor girl!  She was a trooper through it all, and has one MASSIVE tolerance for pain!!!

I have included the x-ray of her arm, so if that isn't something that you can look at while drinking or eating, you may want to quickly move to the second picture down!

Nope, not a bird....just Tearney's arm.  Kind of looks like a dinosaur doesn't it?  That is what she thought!  OUCH!

  

The ER doctor tried to set it, but was not successful, so she had to have surgery.  Here she is in her bed modeling her lovely PURPLE cast.  Actually, she reallllly wanted a KU color (red or blue), but since the hospital is located right across the street from K-State, they did not seem to have those colors in stock.  Hmmm...

They were able to get it into place without having to pin it--YIPPEE!!  He did say we have to watch it very closely the next few weeks as it could slip out of place.  So....she has to take it easy.  She did great through the surgery, but had a reaction to the anesthesia and couldn't keep anything down.  That got us an automatic sleepover.  Fun stuff I tell you......

 She was much better today, and kept that breakfast down like a champ!  So, we were able to be set free again!  You can see her pretty cast (she actually likes the color purple, it is just the whole KSU thing she isn't too fond of--hahaha!).  The stripes on it are actually tape.  They had to saw her cast as she has a huge amount of swelling from getting it back into alignment.  This was already planned to allow for the cast to not be so tight and cause problems.  The tape helps hold it together. She will get a new cast in a couple of weeks.

We are hoping that this satisfies the kids' need for excitement around here for a good long time!!!  :-)  Or, maybe we could encourage them to find ways much more fun than hospital visits to spend our free time?!?!  haha!

Happy 5th Birthday Jentree!!

Jentree is 5 today!  And let me tell you--she is EXCITED!  She LOVES birthdays, and is very happy to tell everyone she meets that it is her special day.  

Seems like you should still be 4 months old! 

 

You took dance class last year for the first time, and really liked it.  You are going to pre-school three days a week, and love it there.  You so enjoy playing with all of your new friends.  You and Mylee are the best of friends, and you two can play all day long together and not have a problem in the world.  

You usually have a smile, but if you are in a bad mood--watch out!!  :-)  We love you to bits, and can't wait to see what this next year has in store for you!  Happy Birthday!!

Halloween 2010

Halloween 2010 started off with decorating the yard, and carving the pumpkins.  

 

 Jentree got in on the cleaning this year.  Not sure what she thought here!

  

Everyone all dressed up before heading out.  We had a mummy, a pirate, two football players, a bat and tweety bird in a pumpkin suit.

 

 It was a beautiful night--crisp fall air, and the smell of leaves--Perfect Halloween weather!

Stopping along the way for a picture.  Notice Tanner is missing.....sigh....  Yes, it was one of those moments I have been dreading.  He was with us for the first few houses, then some of his friends found us, and asked if he could go with them.  I said "yes," because I knew that is what he wanted.  I, on the other hand, was sad to know that we have come to the end of all of them trick-or-treating together.  Sniff.  

Some of the trick or treaters making their way from house to house.  Our neighborhood has become quite the spot for most of the town to come to.  We had around 400 kiddos!  If you look closely in this picture, you can see Tanner! 

Our "House Divided" pumpkins!

Twister Tuesday!!

Our family LOVES Tuesdays--all because of a small local restaurant.  Every Tuesday, they have 1/2 price "Twisters"  (their version of a Blizzard).  They have many options to choose from, and they are GOOD!!

 

When the kids wake up on Tuesday morning, the first thing out of their mouths is, "It's Twister Tuesday!"  It's always good to have something to look forward to!

Under The Lights!!

Tanner's football team has had a great season--they were 7-1 this year.  They played in the championship game yesterday for the 6th grade division.  It was a pretty neat experience for them, as it was the first time they have ever played under the lights!  It was a beautiful fall night--couldn't have asked for better football weather!

Tanner is #2--he is playing defense here.

 

 Making a tackle, and caused the other team to fumble.

Under the lights!

Playing quarterback.

 

Handing off the ball.

The outcome of the game didn't turn out in our favor, but it was a great year!!

A New Road to Go Down

Back in July, we took Mylee in for her well child check up.  One of the questions they ask is about speech.  Mylee just isn't a big talker.  We knew this, and wondered if she didn't have fluid in her ears like her other siblings, and perhaps needed some tubes placed.  That is what we did with Tanner, Calder, Makenna and Jentree.  All were late with language skills, got tubes, then Boom!  Talking away! :-)  The only two unscathed in our family thus far were Tearney and Mylee.  Don't know how they have slipped by!!


So, an appointment was made with our ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) doctor for the following week.  Our pediatrician's office is the BEST!  They got her in right away because they knew I was going back to work in a couple of weeks, so they were trying to help me out--they are awesome!  :-)


We trotted into the ear doctor's office, but no fluid was found.  So, they sent us across the hall for the customary audiologist appointment to check hearing.  Nothing big--normal part of the appointment.  Mylee was in the sound booth with me for the exam.  The audiologist wanted us to come back on Friday when the other audiologist was there to help test since she was young and she wanted to have someone run the equipment while she did the testing with Mylee.


Back we went on Friday.  Mylee again performed the tests, and for a 3 year old, she did really pretty well with cooperating.  When the tests were completed, the audiologists showed me the results. 


Mylee has a sensorineural (permanent) hearing loss.  This was shocking, but yet suddenly made so much sense of everything.  We could look at how she was talking, how she reacted, how she looked like she was reading lips (which she does well), and how she responded to her surroundings--it became very obvious to us.  The type of loss she has is seen infrequently --keeping to true Mylee form.  :-)  Most hearing losses are either with low or high sounds.  Mylee's loss is in the middle frequencies.  She can hear low sounds and she can hear high sounds, but it is the middle sounds that she has a loss with.  It is known as a "Cookie Bite" hearing loss because it looks like a bite has been taken out of the audiogram.  This type is problematic with learning speech sounds as she can hear some sounds, but not all of them.....Nice......  It is also problematic with treating because it is difficult to isolate the exact frequencies she needs.....Nice again.....sigh......


Good news with it was, that Mylee's loss was considered Mild to Moderate, so while this wasn't great news, it certainly could have been worse.  We were obviously saddened to learn about this, but were thankful that it seemed to be something we could manage.  We were told to return in 3 months for a check up.  That takes us to last Friday.  


We had Mylee's follow up appointment and rechecked her hearing.  She again was super cooperative with most of the testing.  She doesn't like the bone conduction test as the headphones for it are tight on her head, and she just wasn't into that!  ha!  So, we got all finished up, and then we asked how things looked.  Her hearing has gotten worse.  


Worse?  Why?  How?  All three questions were asked at that time.  They too were confused, and did not have answers for us, except that it wasn't a good thing as that now means her hearing loss is considered "progressive."  They agreed that we needed to find out why, and if it could be stopped.  Her loss is now considered to be Moderate to Severe in nature, and her baseline threshold has dropped as well.  This is concerning as it is across all of her levels of hearing, not just isolated to her previously diagnosed loss.  


So, now today, we had another appointment with our ENT.  Dr. C has now ordered an MRI and she is going to go through some genetic testing to see if we can find the cause, and more importantly see if it is going to continue to get worse or if we can stop it.  We don't know if any of her problems from when she was an infant have played into this scenario, or if we will ever know the answers.  Dr. C also feels (and we do as well) that she needs to have some hearing assistance to allow her to hear the sounds she is missing.  We will be looking into options available soon--after we can determine what would work best for her.  Some of that will depend on how progressive her loss is. 


So, that is where we are today.  We are going down a new road with Mylee, and it has already turned out to be a bit winding and scenic in true Mylee fashion.  :-)  Why would we expect her to be boring?!   We are hoping and praying for the best, and gearing up for the ride. 

It's All In the Years

I received an email today from one of Tearney's teachers at school.

Tearney:  "Hey, it's my mom's anniversary."

Teacher:  "Cool, how long has she been married?"

Tearney:  "I don't know, 2 years longer than Tanner is!"


Made me smile!!  Thanks Jodi for passing that on!

14 Years!

14 years ago today, was a beautiful October day.  It was sunny and warm during the day, and cooled off in the evening.  A bit windy, but it settled down at dusk.  Everything that we had planned out so carefully came off without a hitch (at least that I knew of!)  It was so much fun, and I can still remember it as if it were yesterday.  

It was a perfect day.  :-)

Love you today.  Love you tomorrow.  Love you forever!

Happy 12th Birthday Tanner!!

You turned twelve years old on 10/10/10!  It is our last year before having a teenager!  You love playing any type of sport--whatever the season is, you love it!  Your favorite thing to do is play front yard football with all of the neighbor boys.  You love being in 6th grade and really enjoy middle school and everything it has to offer. 

I hope this year is everything you want it to be!!  Love you!  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Homecoming 2010

Jentree was a Junior Homecoming Attendant this year.  She was PUMPED!!!  Oh. My. Goodness.  From the moment she woke up this morning, she was asking "When do I get to get dressed?"  I would answer her, and then 5 minutes later, "Is it time yet?"  

Finally, it was time to get ready and head out.  She had a wonderful time sitting with the candidates and getting to show off her dress.  She took her duties very seriously, and told one of the high school girls, Jessie, that she couldn't drop the crown because it was glass and would break ALL over!

 

After the ceremony, she was relaxing with Queen Allison.  She had a wonderful time!

Playin' at KSU!

The boys were lucky enough to have the opportunity to play at Bill Snyder Family Stadium on the Kansas State University campus this past Sunday.  It is always a fun experience, and one that I am sure they will never forget.  Unfortunately, the outcome of their game looked an awful lot like the KSU-Nebraska game this evening, but hey!  It's all about the experience..right?  :-)

I know they would have loved to have won, but they enjoyed getting to play there despite the outcome. We had to start our games earlier than previously planned as Bill Snyder wanted to have practice that afternoon.  Tanner wondered if Bill was in his office watching!  :-)

Daddy-Daughter Night

 Stub took Makenna and Tearney to the Daddy-Daughter Dance on Saturday night.  The girls had so much fun!!  They spent the afternoon getting their hair and nails done by the High School junior girls, and eating little snacks.  What pampering! 

Tearney told me on our way home from getting their hair and nails done--"Mom, I think this has been the best ever, and we haven't even danced yet!"

 

I think they both liked the dancing part too from the reports of the evenings events.  Dad had a great time too!

Storm Action

 The boys played football on Saturday at Riley.  We experienced a very scary looking storm that developed during the games.

 

 This was the beginning.  Lots of lightning and dark clouds.

  

Then the clouds began to look like this.  It was cold and very windy!

I would say it was one of the strangest storms I have been in!! 

 

 

 It finally blew through, and after a one hour delay, the games resumed.  What a day!  It started the morning with very cold and windy weather.  Then sideways rain in a downpour.  Then sun out, and humid.  Only in Kansas!