Holiday and a Party

Tyler - aka the other kid, celebrated his 2nd birthday on Thanksgiving day this year! He loved the cake, presents and the attention. He's at a great age, where each present appears to be the best present he ever recieved! what a blast.

Makenzie continues to recover very well, enjoying school and refusing to take naps. She was very happy for Thanksgiving, with Tyler's birthday and passing the Dr's recommended date for restricted activities. Turkey Day was approximately six weeks post operation, until this time we were attempting to limit her activity as her chest recovered from being opened up for surgery. She was ready for Uncle Larry to stop by, so she could engage in her first dog-pile since before the surgery.

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!

Continuing to Amaze...

Makenzie just keeps amazing us - she has enjoyed a full week of full-day kindergarten this week, hardly missing a beat. She is struggling with understanding why she needs to take it easy; it's hard to explain to a 6 year old that her heart may be in great shape, but her ribcage still needs to heal. The only difference we can tell is that she can be a little more moody than usual, and we've been able to get her down for bed early a couple nights this week.

We had a fabulous weekend spending time with both sides of the family, as we were home for the deer opener. Tyler has clearly chosen his favorite relative outside of Mom, Dad and MJ. He has chosen Grandpa Jim (Heidi's dad) as his best buddy, and they make quite the pair.

We'll be home this weekend, and hope to get a couple more pictures up, for you all to see just how well MJ is doing! Thanks for reading, and for your continued thoughts and prayers for our girl.

Back to Normal

Is there such a thing? MJ is settling into her old routine - riding the bus to kindergarten from Open Arms Daycare, full days of school, etc. Over the course of this past weekend, we learned how well she is doing - refusing to take naps, running all day long. The car ride home at the end of the day is once again filled with songs and stories about the day.

Her incision looks great, the part that sticks out above her shirts is hardly noticeable. We've now officially passed the milestone I talked about last week - the shunt in her head seems to be working just fine, three weeks post-op.

Makenzie is looking forward to some quality time with both sets of grandparents this weekend, as Jim and Lois will be taking her for a sleepover on Thursday night (Her school is out Th and Fr). Then we'll be with Lowell and Casey for the deer opener.

Happy Halloween!

MJ had a great Halloween this year, not even three weeks removed from open heart surgery. We met with her cardiologist Friday afternoon- while we had hoped to do an echo of her heart, her doctor didn't feel it necessary yet, because she looked and sounded so good. That in itself was good news. We'll do another echo in 6 months, to look at pressures, and get an idea of how blood is moving through her heart and lungs.


Halloween itself was a blast - we trick or treated with the neighbors on a gorgeous MN evening. In the picture are good friends Libby and Molly. After a while, we gave up on trying to keep her from running. Even when the younger kids started wearing out, she was going strong. At bedtime when I tried to praise her for being so strong, she replied that she was just excited to get more candy. What an amazing little girl.