Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas from the Aldana family!!!

Michael took this picture w/ the time delay option... we were already dressed from being at Christmas vigil mass, so decided to take a picture before getting the kids in their pajamas. I'm so glad we did! I was so happy w/ how they came out for being a spur of the moment thing. We took a grand total of 5, and 2 out of the five turned out pretty good!



Pictures of the lunar eclipse. I only stayed up to see a partial lunar eclipse, however Michael watched the whole thing. It what really awesome, to say the least. The pictures really don't do it justice!





Jarod, Jeanne and Jada! Another great picture...

Julian grabbing is little toes - even bandaged up!

We dressed Julian up in one of Louis's old costumes, just to get a picture... the costume will be too little for him next Halloween. Doesn't he make a cute lion?
Julian, following his surgery...poor baby... the surgery only took about an hour, however we were there for 12!!! The surgeon was 3 hours behind schedule... I guess surgery is something that can't be rushed! We waited as patiently as we could, meanwhile, poor little Julian was starving!!! I nursed him last at 7 AM, he didn't nurse again for 7 1/2 hours later, and when he did, he was so drugged, he didn't eat much. Later that night and the next day, he made up for it, though! It took him a long time to recover from the anesthesia... they had to intubate him, too...



This was before his surgery - last picture with 12 toes!

Monday, November 29, 2010

Say your prayers, my Dad was admitted into the hospital today. He is having problems getting out of breath and his oxygen level is getting dangerously low. He had a round of tests done today, so hopefully the doctor will soon find out what is going on.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Wow - a lot has happened in the past month! most recently, Josephine was so sick last weekend, she ended up in the ER on Saturday night w/ a 105 degree fever. She tested positive for strep throat and was given a penicillin shot... Her throat doesn't hurt any more and her fever finally went away (she had a high fever over 101/102 for almost 5 days), although she has a bad cough now (the kind where she coughs so much that it has caused her to throw up, at least three times now), is very lethargic and tired, has a poor appetite and most recently has developed hives. At first, w/ Benadryl, the hives went away (last night and again this morning) however, just a few hours ago, they didn't go away, even w/ the medicine. We'll be taking her to the doctor tomorrow to hopefully get some answers and relief...

On a lighter note, the gallery has officially been open for a couple weeks now... Michael's sign turned out pretty good (click on the picture to see it better). It took him several hours to paint those letters! We haven't had a lot of people come in, although we haven't had the opportunity to advertise properly, because that takes a lot of money, which we don't have any extra of right now!!! He's made an additional sign (not shown in this picture) that says "Now open" and will make another A-frame sign (sandwich board) to go out by the street... hopefully that will help get some more people in here. If anyone has any cost-free or low-cost ideas to advertising, please let us know!


Julian is 4 months now (technically tomorrow, he will be). His surgery is scheduled for Dec. 7th - say your prayers! It should only last 1-2 hours and he'll go home immediately afterwards, as long as there are no complications.

Halloween!




Can you believe my sweet little Josephine was dressed as a zombie?! Michael did the face paint... click on it to see the details of blood vessels!
Maureen's 5th birthday! We celebrated on Halloween, just before all the kids went trick-or-treating.

We went to a free LPO concert at the Mandeville lakefront... Veronica's plugging her ears because it was "too loud!"


It is so hard to take pictures of all three girls (or all 4 children) together.. because you end up w/ about 5 pictures like this one:
...before you finally end up w/ at least 2 out of the 3 girls smiling and looking at the camera, like this one:



Michael's homemade pizzas... so yummy!! He made everything from scratch - including the pizza dough and the sauce.

Maureen came out of the bathroom towards the living room dressed like this, w/out thinking twice, like not a thing in the world was wrong! She was so cute and oblivious!

Julian's shirt says "Mummy loves me."

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Julian, in his Sunday best!Josephine on her first day of public school!
Here's a video of Julian smiling (from a sideways view -sorry!). This was from about 3 weeks ago... he's smiling so much more readily now and "talking" a lot more!




Look how attentively Julian looks at Maureen when she talks to him! How sweet! :)









Friday, October 15, 2010

OK - here's the rest of the pictures I wanted to put up here last night... things were working a lot faster this morning!

Just a FYI (if you haven't heard yet): We decided to put Josephine in public school. She had her first day this past Monday. Things are going well, so far! We're adjusting to the earlier mornings, earlier bedtimes and homework! It's taking Josephine some time to finish the homework, but I'm sure that, too, will take some adjusting... I have a picture of her "first day of school," which I'll put up here eventually! We'll continue public school through the end of 3rd grade, and then re-evaluate over the summer to see if we'll continue public school... Her teacher is real nice, and we've talked over the phone and have had plenty of e-mail correspondence. She said Josephine is working, participating, playing w/ the other children and overall, doing very well.

The following pictures are all from a month or more ago, but too good not to put up here! The pictures of the kids swimming all turned out good (thanks, Julius for taking good pictures!).