Owl pellets and Leighton update...

My friend, Niki, gave us 3 owl pellets last week....the kids LOVED it! Now, what I first thought owl pellets were...they weren't. It's actually undigested bones and fur that the owl vomits (like a big furball!)...we picked at it with tweezers and pins and came up with this:
Amazing, isn't it???


Tom gave the girls a shoulder ride a few days ago...

...and then the boys got a turn!

Little Leighton was the last of the Mirabellas to get the "bad cold" that started with grandma (we love you, grandma!!)...she fell asleep on the sofa several times monday. AJ had it on Thanksgiving day and fell asleep on the floor while the rest of us ate our Thanksgiving dinner. :(

We finally pulled out our sad-looking 6-foot Christmas tree from storage. We decided to put it on top of the train table so that the twins wouldn't be too tempted to push at it and such. Matthias didn't want to be in the picture, but here they are! I, personally, miss cutting down our christmas tree after tromping around in the freezing cold trying to decide on the perfect one...but the kids had a blast with this one and really don't know any different.

Leighton:

Tom came with me to All Children's today b/c they were planning on sedating Leighton for her contrast CT. Poor baby wasn't supposed to eat or drink anything 4 hours before the procedure, so we woke her up at 5:00 (4 1/2 hours before the procedure) and sat her at the table with a bowl of cheerios. She just sat there looking at us like we were crazy! After about 2 minutes we realized she wasn't going to eat or drink so we put her back to bed....and of course she woke up an hour and a half later and ran to her booster seat saying "cheeros, cheeros!". That was hard... to not give her anything to eat and know that she didn't understand at all why we were torturing her. Anyways, I could go on forever...but long story short she did great for the scan...they didn't have to put her under! Tom was at her feet, I held her hands and leaned in by her head and we sang songs for the 10 minutes that they did the scan. We got the the dr's office afterwards and he said that everything looked great!...the mass pushing her trachea is still there, but has definitely improved. She had several nodes in her lungs....some have gotten smaller, some have not changed, but overall they are encouraged that we are on the right track. We will continue to go in every 3 or 4 weeks...probably until she is totally back to normal. Thank you for your continued prayers...we are so glad about how things are going and will keep updating you as we have check-ups!