For the last day of 2018, here is a variety of photos to catch up on the rest of December.

Christmas day was good for the boys. They had a pile of presents under the tree!

One of the things the boys desperately wanted is their own real safe. So they each got one. The very first thing Brendan did, before we could even load batteries in it, is to put all of his most precious things, AND THE MASTER KEY, in the safe and lock it shut!
We tried several things to figure out how to hack open the safe. Bill even thought about cutting it open and then welding it back together.
We found a youtube video that showed that you could drop the safe on a bed and if you turned the knob right at the moment of zero-G when the safe bounced, it would open. Sure enough, it took me about 10 tries to get the timing just right, but it WORKED.

Bailey gave the boys these cute embroidered tags that now hold the master keys and the safes have batteries in them. So we know the safes aren’t super secure. They do have mounting hardware to use from the inside. Mounting them to the wall or floor would prevent the bounce technique from working.

Brendan’s favorite video game to play is “Bendy and the Ink Machine” and the main character is a little devil named Bendy. He really really wanted a cute Bendy to cuddle.

I had to make him one! Bendy goes everywhere now, he has been through the wash a few times.

Bendy even went to Butterfly Wonderland

December 26th, Brendan and Gramma went into surgery at the same time. Gramma had her second knee replacement. Brendan was having a heart cath and a biopsy of his liver, plus a huge list of blood tests.

The procedures went well. The cath came back with excellent results. The pressures in his heart and the flow and function were about as good as can be expected in a patient with Brendan’s physiology.
The liver biopsy ruled out a number of scary things that could be causing Brendan’s liver fibrosis. That was a relief. But it was still inconclusive as to what was actually causing the liver issues.

Brendan was extremely sore for almost a week from the biopsy, but he recovered well.

Brendan wasn’t well enough to travel, so Bill took Trevor on a little winter excursion to find some snow.

It got seriously cold for this Arizona native. In to the teens at night!

Best thing to do in freezing weather is have an ice cream cone!

The view is beautiful through the window from inside a nice heated trailer!

The water lines froze up!

Time to head back home!

Happy New Year to all!

We have tried to uphold an annual tradition with the chocolate house building and decorating fun.

It starts with one of the most fun parts – shopping at Sweeties Candy!

It is hard not to fill the cart up with sugary fun

Trevor is armed with his scooper

They were all sold out of green gummy army men. But we have cows!

Pecan clusters bigger than the boys’ hands!

We made an extra house this year because we were going to have some friends join us on decorating day. But their kids got sick and had to stay home. We did deliver the supplies to them later. We didn’t need two chocolate houses in our fridge! We made mini graham-houses so each kid could have their own, and the big one was for the whole family.

The boys get focused

We will have to start a gallery of finished houses over the years. I don’t think this one will stand out as the prettiest, but it sure was tasty!

Coincidentally, right after we bought Brendan his piano, we got a flyer from school that they were doing lessons. I signed him up! It was just once a week after school for six weeks, taught in a group of about a dozen kids. They started from scratch teaching the piano keys, how to read a scale and different types of notes, rests, and rhythms.

At the end of the six weeks, they did a “recital”.

Brendan is playing “It’s a Small World After All”.

I really wanted him to continue in this class for the next six week session, but he says that he is too tired after school and just wants to come home. I will have to look in to other options to help him continue to learn!