That can't be right...SNOW?!

Yep, that's right folks snow! What a great day Monday was! 3-4 inches of beautiful thick flakes cascading down on palm trees and cacti! Thanks to the McMillans for making the trek out to Summerlin. It was a blast!

Good thing we had some winter gear from Chicago. Not very water proof though.

Only in Vegas can you build a Polynesian Snowman. (Yes that's palm bark!)

Santa Came to Town

Last Saturday Olivia and Aaron were invited, through Candlelighters (a children's cancer organization), to participate in "Shop with a Cop". In this case the North Las Vegas police department raised funds for patients and their siblings to go hog wild shopping at Kmart. We, 

 luckily Bill was with us, arrived at the store at 5:30 am on the 13th, signed in, ate donuts, got paired up with the kids assigned cops, watched a parade of police vehicles transporting Santa and the Mrs., and then went to have a chat with the big guy himself. After pictures were taken of each child and their cop with Santa, they chose a Christmas Bear in a shopping cart and away they went. Aaron was paired with a K9 officer who was a new dad himself, and Livi was put with a big teddy bear. He either carried Livi or held her hand the entire time. 

We originally didn't know how much each child was going to get to spend. Olivia had wanted a toy set that was $50. I told her officer and he said it wouldn't be a problem. I was curious, "How much exactly are they getting?" My jaw dropped. It went from how much do they get to spend to how much do they have to spend?! Neither of the kids had any problem being alone with their officers. Olivia and officer Memo had a slow start but once Livi realized she could get both the Bride Barbie and the Pony Barbie, they were on a role. (One little girl had 6 Barbies in her cart!) Aaron was giving officer 

 Paul a bit more of a challenge. He's quite the little thinker. Anything that Paul asked him if he'd like Aaron would hum and hah over it for such a long time. Then it was choosing which color. If you suggested th

at he get both he would push both away, say no, and you'd be right back at square one. He never really got into it as much as we thought he would. Towards the end of the 4 hour shopping spree he finally ran up to Elefun and said "my cart" (ca'k actually, for cart). It 

 will be interesting shopping with the kids after this. I wonder if they'll have withdrawls and want everything in sight. We got some great things. And I even was able to remember Aaron's new bunk beds and pick him up 2 sets of sport themed sheets. 

Our officers were the last to go through check out. As the kids and I, Bill had to leave a bit early, ate delicious boxed lunches, the cops took everything up front. They reported that we had actually gone over by about $20 each, I told them "I could've taken some stuff out." and they

 said, "The store had planned on it and had gift cards waiting on hand".

The amount of dedication these officers had for raising as much funds as they did is unbelievable. The kids were on cloud 9. As the carts went from 2 to 3 Bill and I were wondering if our new house would hold all the loot. We decided to quickly explain...we told the kids that Santa had come to see them this morning. "This year he was letting them do their own shopping because they had been so brave and strong with all the yucky hospital visits and doctor appointments and  medicine." 

The kids later agreed to not get into any of their things and that Mom and Dad would do a favor for Santa and wrap all his gifts for them. (Funny how Bill's getting out of that one when it was his idea!)

We all had a great time and especially enjoyed visiting with Leila's family, as they were also invited to join in on the fun.

Tongue Tied

Aaron, my sweet big boy. He needs some time in the spotlight. We are so proud of him, especially as of late, and we have much to be proud of.

Aaron has always, since birth, been a little bit slower in accomplishing mile stones. And perhaps not compared to all but there were definite lags in some. One of the biggest challenges for him as been speech. He never babbled, neither did Olivia as a baby, but Aaron was even less. When Aaron was 26 mos he was evaluated by several speech and child devolpmentalists and they all agreed that Aaron was delayed. His communicative output was that of a 113 month old and his fine motor skills were at a 17 month old's. He was to start in home therapy within a month, but there office backed up and we ended up dealing with the start of Leukemia so finally in August we were assigned a "teacher" and we, Aaron, has been working hard ever since. He has very specific speech delays. He doesn't have any frontal sounds. So instead of "d" he says "g" and "k" for "t". Any sound that is formed at the front of your mouth, "ch, sh, l," is not possible. Once we learned this we were able to start understanding him better. Also, he wasn't putting ending consonants on anything. Late in September, we were at one of Livi's appointments and I told Aaron "after the doctor, we're going to the park for park day". He looked at me, held his hand up to his throat, (that's what we taught him to do when he's trying to make a throat sound as opposed to a frontal sound) and said, "pa'...K.  pa'..K, PA'K!". I don't know who was more excited me or him. He totally realized what he had just done and kept saying it over and over. He found other ending consonants that day as well. "DoG" and "biKe" to name a few. You could see the light bulb working over time over his little head!

He has continued to excel and last week he had his evaluation to see how far behind he still is. If he failed, it meant that he was still significantly delayed and would receive state paid for preschool and even get to ride on a school bus...he's been sooo excited. If he passed, it meant that he was fine and preschool, if we chose to put him in, would be paid for just like everyone else. Leading up to the eval. his therapists and I have been nervous. We've always known he

was bright, he just seems to have some issues with oral speech and common sense rules. They prepped me with how to point out all his flaws. I felt bad focusing on the negative but we were going to do what we had to do. Well the morning came and of course, he was wearing his big boy spidey underwear, (that did not help our side) he even used their toilet 3 times for pee and once for poop! That definitely didn't help our side! Not only that but I guess he's even smarter than we all thought. He evaluated with 3 different specialists and all 3 of them had to bring out more advanced modalities and flash cards. It was so cute to watch him. He would study the card/modality, point to an answer, and then say,"ummm, no..." change his mind and point to the right one and say, "yeah". The whole time with his head cradled in his left hand, with his left elbow resting on the little desk. Way too cute! His IQ came out to be on the high end of his age range, I don't remember the number, I just remember thinking, there goes free preschool, and from the language specialist, his comprehension tested at a 5 year old's! 5! He's still not quite 3! She said that he could still probably qualify for speech (which would be therapy once a week for an hour at a time) but preschool wasn't looking promising. I just smiled and shook my head. I have a little boy genius on my hands whose only Achilles heal is that he's tongue tied! As we were driving away the "little Einstein" saw a school bus and said, "my 'kool buk" (keep in mind, still no frontal sounds) I smiled turned to him and said, "some day", just not when you're 3.

On top of his speech continually improving, and this awakening to his brain power, Aaron is also well on his way to being potty trained. He loves his big boy underwear and HATES putting on his pull up for naps and night time. I will say I'm having a tough time battling him anymore because the last 4 days he's woken up dry from both. I just don't think I'm ready for the possible consequence of an accident.  

Heart Attack

What a great feeling it is to be loved!

My friend, Alison, had warned me ahead of time that her primary class of 7 year olds had wanted to give "Livi's family" a heart attack. So, Friday night, Dec. 5th, while the youngsters worked frantically outside, Bill was instructed to keep our little ones busy in the back, the whole time Bill was clueless as to what was happening. When they came out and opened the door, to a doorbell ditch, Olivia and Aaron's  faces were full of surprise! It was so great. (Too bad my camera battery was dead.) But the next morning they were still loving it!

Twelve Days of Chicago

Keep in mind...this is my journal...it's long because these are my memories!

Generally speaking, at this time of year when I think of the "12 days of..." I think of Christmas. This year we experienced something a little bit different. Once we arrived home from our trip to Redding, on Sunday, November 16, Bill left early Monday morning for Chicago and was scheduled to be there until Dec. 2nd. Keep in mind he had been in New York the week before and we had spent very limited time with him before that. I broke down and cried for the first time with the craziness of his incessant absences, and with Bill's encouragement booked 3 round trip flights to Chicago, leaving the 21st and coming home the 2nd. Bill was supportive of the idea as long as, and this was his one condition, I find a house to buy before we came back. Oh sure, no problem!!! I had 4 days to find a house, find warm clothing, and get a new driver's license. ( As the TSA gentleman so nicely pointed out to me on our trip up to Redding, my California license had expired on my birthday...in JUNE! Ooops!) Well thanks to great friends who watched the kids while I house hunted and thanks to a patient realtor, we got the job done. Yes we found a house that will be done being built the end of the year and we'll be moving in the first of the new year. (For those of you with good memories, yes, this will be the 3rd home we've purchased and moved into at this wonderfully calm time of year!)  Also a huge thanks to Bill's connections at the DMV who was able to slip me in behind the scenes, special authorized personnel only access, and get a pass to the front of the line for my driver's license. I felt that if I was to turn around everyone would be holding eggs ready to pelt me with them. Needless to say, I got my license, actually took a pretty good picture, if I do say so myself, and am now an official Nevadian! (I still say I'm from California.) But I digress...onto Chicago!

I feel so fortunate and a little spoiled to have been allowed this opportunity. After all, not many people get to spend 12 days on vacation with hotel accommodations being paid for and

 per diem covering the rest. I won't say that I went hog wild on the spending, I don't think I have that bone in my body, but I will say, if we felt like hot chocolate from Starbuck's, we got hot chocolate from Starbuck's. (I found that my taste is much simpler, and actually preferred the much cheaper chocolate from DunkenDonuts, so did the kids.) I did my best, with Bill's encouragement, to make the most of the experience and so we did. Museums, shopping,

sight seeing, restaurants, snow, we did it all! The first night we got there was a whopping 17 degrees FAHRENHEIT! We were hungry after traveling all day and eating next to nothing so we 

went down to a highly recommended Pizza place called "Giordonno's". (The one thing I did scrimp on was transportation. I didn't want to throw $$$ at a taxi when we could walk.) So we bundled up and walked the 4 or 5 blocks to pizza. WOW! 20 degrees and below is quite COLD! Livi did great and so did Aaron (he got the chariot ride in the stroller), and we took the opportunity the next day to buy better winter gear. Old Navy on State Street became an almost daily stop for us the first week we were there. 

 We rode the buses everywhere. (This picture happens to be the

last day we were there, the first day of snow, waiting for the bus.) The kids got really good at knowing what buses we needed to take to get downtown and back to the hotel. Even Aaron could recognize our bus and would yell, "Hurry, 20 Maddison!" We stayed at The Crowne Plaza just west of downtown by a few blocks, which happened to be in Greek Town. We found a great cafe in Greek town, Meli's Cafe, where we had breakfast twice with Bill, both times 

ordering way more food than we could eat. Bill didn't have to start getting ready for work until noon but the kids were still on west coast time so would sleep in 'til about 10 each day. (I told Bill we are going to put black out shades in their rooms at the new house, cause I'm sure that helped too.) We did try to take advantage of our mornings together and went downtown twice as well, just for a quick photo op with Dad. It was nice though to lazy around the room all morning together. Inevitably, by the time the kids and I were ready to see the sights for the day, we'd get to the museums at 1 or 2 and they'd be closing at 5! The museums that we attended had 3 levels of exhibits and we only saw 1 floor at each one. The last museum we went to was the Science and Industry museum. I planned for a

couple of activities that day since we only had 2 days left, but as it turned out we were there for 5 hours and still only saw 1 floor. They also had real snow coming down every 1/2 hour by the main Christmas tree and we only saw that twice. Just goes to show how much fun we had doing the activities that we did see. It was great. The only thing that would've been better is if, as Livi said, "I wish Daddy could be with us for a day or something." A couple of times I let the kids stay up late to see Daddy come home. We waited for him down in the lobby with P.J.'s on. As soon as Bill would walk through the "spinning door" (that the kids fell in love with) Livi and Aaron would run yelling into his arms. All the other agents getting off the shift would smile and laugh. One guy, said on a 

couple of different occasions, "That's the best feeling in the world." He is right. 

Olivia did great. It was so nice not having to worry about blood draws, hooking her up to TPN, or even a diet. Her counts have been amazing and so her energy level and everything is just fantastic. She's even eating more like her normal self. She only had to wear a mask on the airplane simply as a precaution, but other than that,

 and her lack of hair, no one would even know that she's sick. She trudged alongside of Aaron in the stroller 98% of the time. When she would complain that she was tired I'd switch them out. It never lasted too long though cause Aaron isn't a walker, he's a wanderer.  Both of our little ones took to city life very nicely. They both got the hang of entering and exiting buses, revolving doors, and 

 escalators. One day we spent at least 3 hours in Macy's going up and down the escalators of what seemed to be an 11 story building! It was fantastic free fun with plenty for mommy to look at! And a beautiful tree in the center court.

 Besides from the Vertigo that I had from the time I landed in Chicago 'til the day after we got home to Las Vegas, it was such a fantastic opportunity. It definitely doesn't replace Bill's absence over the last 3+ months, but at least we were together some of the time, and got to experience a lot of great things.

This was at the Lincoln Park Zoo. It was a free zoo that was

really nice. It had indoor as well as outdoor exhibits. We didn't see everything the first time so we went back a second time and saw the "Zoolights". The entire zoo is decorated with Christmas lights and winter figurines. The glasses that the kids are sporting made the lights look like diamonds. Way cool! (Aaron was hungry, just after, the pouty picture we shared a popcorn.)

The second night we were there was the Lighting of Miracle Mile. It is a pretty big to-do with Mickey Mouse waving his magic wand down

Michigan Ave and lighting a mile's worth of trees! When we got there, thankfully Aaron had fallen asleep in the stroller, there were hundreds of people. The crowd was at least 50 deep just from us to the parade route itself. Olivia was devastated. She "wanted to see Mickey Mouse". These tears of sadness fell on loving ears and a local family willingly gave up their dad's shoulders for the better part of the hour long parade and thus provided Livi with the best seat in the house! (45 minutes isn't justice to Jack's poor once 6'4 frame. By the end it was more like 6'even!) It was a choice meeting if ever there was one. Jack recently beat a cancer diagnosis from last year. It's great to meet great people who we'll beable to keep in touch with through the years. Thank you Jack, Nancy, and Cathy! Merry Christmas!

Thanks to my Internet savvy self (haha) we were able to attend the Shedd Aquarium for free! (It was the last free day of the month so we seized the chance. It was, like everything else, great!     It was a

bit difficult trying to keep Aaron close by. It was very low lighting with lots of colors surrounding us and Aaron was glad to see open space before him! Luckily he did eventually fall asleep and Livi and I were able to enjoy the exhibits. Way to much to see, in not nearly enough time! Our favorite were the sea dragons. I never even knew such mystical looking creatures existed! God's beauty never ends.

 

This was mommy's day of rest. By Monday, we had been sight seeing in the cold for 2 days and I needed to recoup. I justified it being that it was drizzling and windy outside. The kids liked the idea of it; we rented a movie and hung out in the room for the day. Livi did well, watched the movie and played while Aaron just wandered around bored out of his mind, but I LIKED IT! I actually read a book, didn't shower and did nothing all day. I don't think I've ever experienced a day like that until now. I highly recommend it every once a few years at least!

One thing we did to save money on basics so we could DO everything we wanted to is pack

lunches and find cafeterias in shopping centers to enjoy them. Thanks to the cold weather for allowing us the use of our balcony and nature's  refrigerator.  Suprisingly in sub 30 temperatures nothing ever froze!

Meet Sue! If you ever saw the movie "Night At the Museum" this is the bone chasing T-Rex. She resides in the Natural Field Museum in Chicago. Once again too much stuff with not a lot of time. Oh yeah, to add to the busy schedule, we decided to potty train Aaron while in the windy, cold city. Smart huh? Well when he woke up dry one morning we thought...we'd better run with it. Pull ups r us now. And besides the fact that he refuses to stand so he has to get naked from the waste down, it's not that bad. I'm definitely not going to rush it.

Thanksgiving day was one to remember or perhaps one to forget. With the help of hotel staff we chose a kid friendly diner, "the White Palace". 

I still wanted us to dress nice, like we would at a family dinner. We had a cab take us and as soon as I stepped out I wanted to get back in. I don't think I would've gone there for a regular meal let alone Thanksgiving dinner. It was a 4 course meal with the food actually pretty good. The service was less than par. As gravy flowed off the side of my entre plate, I quickly shifted our used dishes to the table next to us so that we could have more space. And much to my surprise, the kids begged to take the bus home. At least we were together, Livi wasn't in a hospital bed and she could eat whatever she wanted!

A day at Navy Pier was a definite win! Shopping, a marionette show, and even a juggling act that Livi got called up to help with. The day wouldn't have been complete without a ride 

on the giant ferris wheel. Way COOL!

The two days we went downtown with Dad:   One to get a picture in front of Cloud

Gate, aka "the Bean", and 2 to the German Christmas Festival at Daley Plaza to see Santa and the giant Christmas tree. Of course waiting in a long cold line does require a large chocolate chip cookie!

Friday after Thanksgiving the kids and I, well Aaron once again fell asleep, got to experience a great way to kick off the Christmas season. Christmas caroling in Chicago with a local choir at "the Bean"! We did all sorts of Christmas songs and I soon remembered how much my mom loved the Christmas season. Olivia had such a great time. We even sang the 12 days of Christmas, our group was the "4 calling birds". Olivia still walks around the house saying, "FIVE GOLDEN RINGS!!!"

I could've looked at this for hours. It may very well be the most beautifully man made thing

I have ever seen. The largest Tiffany glass dome in the world spanning 38 ft. This was in the Chicago Cultural center that once was originally built as a library. It just got done being restored this summer, to remove the cement dome over the top. Now sunlight bathes the room. This other dome is just a bit smaller and due for restoration next year. The kids and I found it by mistake. I think it was a pretty good mistake to make!

So many pictures, such little web space! The Lego Store, several dinners of soup at Panera (that Livi adequately renamed "DunkenBread"),Rainforrest Cafe on our last night, a beautifully decorated city, a trip to the emergency room on Thanksgiving eve at midnight(my vertigo had become unbearable. Valium is not a good option!),waiting for Bill in the hall outside our room after I put the kids to bed; "these are a few of my favorite things".  All of it was so great. Maybe Bill will experience it all some day too!