A death in the family if you must know

Otto (our new bird) died. Why can we not seem to keep a parakeet alive around here? This is our 4th bird! Two of them lasted about a year each, but two of them have lasted weeks to months. Otto is the shortest lived thus far. I was hoping the guinea pig would be the next animal to go as he is a pain in the you-know-what to take care of, but he seems to be doing great. Birds really are great pets (pretty to look at, easy to care for and apparently short lived) so I think we will get another one (or two) sometime. I don't understand why we appear to have bad luck with them. Fintan was devastated for about 15 minutes, but has moved on--clearly they were not as close as we thought!

Home

Susie and Maeve (and my mom) made it home amidst the snowmaggedon we are experiencing here. Maeve is doing really well. She is a little dazy/confusey, but seems to be good. The boys are giving her lots of attention (you can see Cian sitting attentively by her side) and offering to get her anything she wants. I'm sure that will last a few hours, but we are enjoying it for now!

Thanks for all the prayers and good wishes. Thanks to Mimi for taking Susie and Maeve and hanging out!

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In Recovery

Maeve is out of surgery and in recovery. Susie is waiting to see her now. Everything went great! The physician was able to do everything he wanted (this morning he said he would just have to wait until he got in there to see what was possible.) He thinks we will be very happy with the results. Because so much was done, he thinks Maeve will spend the night tonight just to make sure her pain control is good. We will find out more this afternoon. It looks like we will need to go back next week for a cast/dressing change that they want to do in the OR (mainly for pain control reasons).

I am so relieved it went well. Now onto recovery and healing!

Say a little Prayer for you...

Susie and Maeve left this afternoon for St. Louis. Maeve is having another surgery tomorrow on her left hand. This is a big one and will reposition some of her fingers and do some big bone changer-rama inside her hand (do you like my technical speak?). I am sure all will go well, but you know it is my job to worry about everything, so I am doing my job well tonight.

If you are thinking about it, say a little prayer for Maeve tomorrow around 7am. They should be starting then! I'll update tomorrow as I get more information on the surgery progress.

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Cold

It is freezing outside and I am not a winter person. Thankfully the kids seem to be winter people, so they are enjoying this misery! No school for a couple days last week and some good times sledding have left us with happy kids. Maeve is not loving the cold, but she seems to tolerate it. She prefers to stay inside though, where it is nice and warm. The pictures below are during our sledding trip after some of the snow had melted. The previous days were a little better.
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Maeve....this is the walk between our house and the car. This is about the longest period of time she wants to be outside.
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Cian making his way up the hill.
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Fintan- taking the shorter hills
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Aidan hits the steepest hills and loves it.

A New Year

Happy New Year! We rang in the new year in our usual fashion with family. It was more quiet this year than normal, but we still had a great time. The kids had a blast. They all made it to midnight and thankfully all slept in the morning. Fintan didn't wake up until 1100 today!

We are looking forward to 2011. A lot of crappy family illnesses happened in 2010 and we are hoping all of that is behind us this year. We were plenty ready to say goodbye to 2010 and hello to 2011.
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Maeve all decked out and ready to party.

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Some of the girls.

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Cian and Fintan getting ready for the count down.

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All the kids right before the ball drop.

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This is Otto. He is the newest member of our menagerie. He arrived via Santa on Christmas morning to the delight of Fintan. He has been a great pet so far and getting very used to handling as I think he has been in his cage for about 5 minutes over the past week.