First and foremost, let me apologize to anyone that I may have offended with my last post. It was not my intent to put anyone down for choices they have made in life, only to voice my concerns on how some choices have affected me personally. I love my family dearly.. ALL OF THEM. My point was only to voice my fears of the upcoming holidays and the rest of my life and the changes that may or may not take place.

Anyway...

Brenden's football season ended last weekend. The 5th grade team (his primary team) entered into the tournament with no wins.. so we weren't expecting much different. Wow.. were we wrong! They won their first game and took 3rd place. He was SO excited! It was so much fun to watch the whole team get fired up and actually play to the end!! He was so happy that we all failed to see how sick he was actually getting! By Sunday night he was feeling really bad.. high fever and coughing. We visited the doctor Tuesday fearing that he (like several others in the area) had H1N1. The test came back negative but he was diagnosed with bronchitis. Our main hope now is that it doesn't turn into pneumonia.
Carson is being Carson - wild and crazy! He is continuing to ramble on and on.. picking up a few new words here and there. His latest issue has been sleeping at night. Doug and I have have spent several nights sleeping on the floor of his room. He goes to bed just perfect but is waking up anywhere between midnight and 3am. The only way he will lay back down is to snuggle up with one of us. He seems to do it about 4 or 5 times a week.. which is more than enough to create tons of aches and pains for Doug and I!! We are in the process of trying to find a twin bed to put in his room. He is really getting too long for the toddler bed and with the way he moves around, is constantly falling out of bed! Plus an actual bed would give us somewhere to lay when we camp out in his room for the night!!
Doug and I took a trip to Sioux Falls yesterday to have his tooth pulled. The oral surgeon in this area wasn't able to get him in until December so Doug took charge and found someone who could do it much sooner. He has been in constant pain for about 2 weeks.. so we are both happy that he was able to get it out quicker. It was quite funny to see him after the extraction while he was still partially drugged up.. he was all riled up about the dentist being a Vikings fan! He even asked me if the dentist wrote on his face! Hopefully he will be feeling much better now!

I finally got my new tattoo. I suppose I should tell you why I say "finally". When we found out that Lilly was sick and would probably not survive, I started thinking about what I could do to keep her memory with me. As most of you know, I like tattoo's, up until last week I had 5. At the time of my pregnancy we didn't have a name picked out but after her birth we chose Lillian. Since then I have been wanting to get a Lilly tattoo but I have made excuse after excuse when it came to actually doing it. I suppose it was part of my grieving process.. I wasn't really ready to come to terms with a lot of it. The past month has been a tough one for me, but a good one at the same time. I have done a lot of grieving and some healing. Last weekend I finally decided that I was ready to get my tattoo in honor of my baby girl. I asked Doug to come with me in fear of having an emotional meltdown. I was actually quite shocked at how easy it was to get through. Now every time I look at it I am reminded of my beautiful Lilly and the mark she will forever have in our lives.

We are trying to get ready for the upcoming holidays early, so that we (ok..basically "I") can feel more prepared and less frantic. We have most of Carson's birthday and Christmas presents bought, and have started on Brenden's. I have been picking up little things here and there for others as I run across them. My goal is to have everything done by the first part of December! We are currently planning to take a trip to Chicago immediately after Christmas to be able to spend some time with Doug's family as well! I am hoping that the winter weather takes a break and allows that trip! It's always nice to be able to get everyone together!