Christmas time

babycenter.com is a website that I use on a regular basis. They have many different groups of parents who have been in the same place as you have. They have boards for parents of children who have to have feeding tubes, children who have had or are going to have heart surgery, birth groups and most importantly an AMAZING Down syndrome support group.

The Down syndrome group decided to do a gift exchange. Gabriel was paired up with Mary Caitlin. Mary Caitlin sent Gabriel an amazing gift. Here are some pictures of Gabriel opening his gift today. We couldn't wait until Christmas as you can see ;)

An amazingly cute photo that Mary Caitlin sent with her gift to Gabriel.



Someone loves his mommy :)







Dancing to EMO (Elmo)




Thank you Mary Caitlin... Gabriel LOVES his gift!!!

Snow SNow SNOw SNOW

The first real snow of the season was a HUGE one! Kent county got hit the hardest with a foot of snow. For those who don't know, I work 45 minutes from home in Grand Rapids Public Schools. Grand Rapids happens to be in the heart of Kent county. Grand Rapids rarely cancels school. When there is no school many of the kids do not have food, others are safer at school than at home, there are many situations which make administrators think twice about having school. Due to the amount of snow we got Thursday night every single school in Kent county canceled, including Grand Rapids Public. I got to spend an extra day at home!!!

Even my palm tree got snowed over


When Gabriel happens to fall asleep lately we leave him. He is teething and does not sleep a lot at night (which means neither does mom).

Here he fell asleep with his Heart Ernie. Grandma gave Ernie a little heart surgery so he would have a whole heart and a little scar just like Gabriel. I know you can't see it in the picture but it is so darn cute!


Gabriel has taken to rearranging our DVD's. In this next picture he cleaned the shelf out. He fell asleep playing with a little mirror (on his head).


Gabriel wants to show his dancing skills. I am trying to figure out why the whole video is not showing up. I know that it can be seen on photobucket.

thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We had a great Thanksgiving. We went to my parents house in Lansing. This allowed Gabe to hunt while Gabriel and I hung out with grandma, grandpa, aunt Brett, great-grandma and great aunt Billi.

It is always nice to see my family. We missed uncle Nick but it is hard for him to visit. My brother lives in Denver, CO and works so many hours that we are lucky to get phone calls. He managed to call on Thanksgiving at a time that everyone happened to be close together. He got to speak to everyone before hanging up the phone. How nice is that!

Gabriel is getting so big! His new tooth is being put to work. He is chewing on everything to make sure it is nice and sharp. He managed to bite my stomach the other day. I had to lecture him about already starting in on his sister. Goodness, what am I in for?

We are down to 11 weeks as of today. GOODNESS! We have Isabella's crib set up already. We don't have to worry about much for her. She wont notice she is using her brothers things for a little bit so we are lucky ;).

I need to take pictures. Our house is all ready for Santa. I put the lights up outside when we got home from Lansing. I was even able to put our tree up in the living room. Gabriel does not like the feel of it and hasn't touched it more than once. Thank goodness!

I am so thankful that I am blessed with such an amazing husband and son!

I am very tired. I am going to cut this short. Have a wonderful evening!