Our Halloween

The kids had a very fun Halloween this year! We had a Witch, Darth Vader, & a Fairy Princess! They were definitely entertaining to go trick-or-treating with -- Colette especially was constantly mumbling the funniest things - after every door, she'd be looking in her bucket and saying, "That's so nice for me!" She couldn't believe all these people were giving her candy... Samuel loved to be the brave one whenever they came upon a "spooky" house - he would march up to it so proudly to prove he was not scared - when his sisters were much more hesitant. :) And when we got home, and he dumped out his candy, he gave Jared and I quite the surprise when he shouted, "Holy Crap!" (Or in his language - "Ho-wee Twap"!) :) We'd never heard him say that before - we were definitely cracking up... And our ever-social Brielle -- she was more excited about coming home to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters -- she was literally flagging people down from our doorway, so they would come to our house to get candy! Funny kids... They sure make the holidays fun... :)


These were their scary faces for Halloween - (above) - of course it's kind of hard to see Samuel's! :)

Timothy's First Halloween

Well, Halloween was definitely an exciting day for our little Timothy in the NICU -- he got to eat formula again!! After 4 1/2 weeks of being N.P.O. (not eating), he had his first day of the slow process we are now going thru - building up his feeding amounts on a special formula (low in the fats that run through his lymph vessels) called Portagen. Of course it was a very tiny amount of the formula that day (majorly diluted), but it was still an exciting day because it finally began the process! (And he actually did seem to notice the difference somewhat - he liked it!) And so far so good - it's been a little over a week now, and still no signs of the fluid building up in his chest cavity again! He just started on full-strenght Portagen yesterday - still a small amount, but no diluting - all formula now!! He definitely likes it, though I'm sure his body is going to take some time to adjust to food again... Lots of spitting up and he's had some issues with a weird stridor noise lately... Still, we're going in the right direction!

This is Timothy listening to a tape that the kids made for him - we taped them singing songs and telling him stories and saying nursery rhymes, etc... He actually enjoys listening to it and hearing their voices - his eyes get so big, as he tries to figure out where it's coming from. We're hoping this will help him to know them a little better when he comes home! :)

Timothy Bruce Ray - 7 Weeks Old

First Halloween!

Carving our Jack-o-Lantern

The kids wanted to do a silly face this year for our Jack-o-Lantern... We actually got a little bit of help from them for once, getting the seeds out -- although it took a lot of encouragement! We had a fun little family night together doing our jack-o-lantern... (Oct. 30)

Our First Snowfall!

Well, as of this point, the weather is perfect these days, but a few weeks ago, we actually had a couple of snowy days (in October!!) We were a little worried about what that was going to mean for our winter, but luckily, the weather has warmed up a bit once again, and we are having some beautiful days around here for now. Those few days it did snow, the kids were so excited, of course, to get to see it and watch it from the windows, and for Brielle, to get to go to school in it! (And Timothy got to see his first snowfall out the hospital window!) These pictures are from October 28 - our first day of snow for the season!