Hope-mas 2008

Hope: Day 18, looking dapper in her hat

Hope's First Christmas with the Family

All of the gifts brought by Santa

Santa's presents

Santa definitely made it to the McCrib!!!!

As you can see from the pictures above, today has been a very blessed day. To get all the presents in the picture I had to go take it from the balcony, but even then I still didn't get them all in the picture!!! We are still in awe at the incredible amount of generosity and selflessness that we have experienced. Christmas morning at the McCrib was amazing. The children that were there got to see Santa, got HUGE bags of gifts, had breakfast and lunch served, all out of the graciousness of others. It really is amazing!! Hope now has more stuffed animals than the rest of us combined, and she hasn't even left the hospital yet!!!

When we were done with the Santa festivities we hurried over to see Hope. She had another great night, but a little tougher morning. She had to have her dressings redone, and the IV in her head wasn't working out so that had to be put somewhere else. The good news: Hope now gets to wear hats again, hence the awesome Christmas stocking cap. The bad news: Hope has yet another IV site in her little veins. The nurses are taking very good care of Hope today. Watching very closely to make sure she stays stable. We didn't get to stay in very long today because she was a little agitated with all of the medical attention this morning so she wasn't settled enough to have our loving attention. But hopefully this afternoon when we return she will have had some good rest!! The nurses were very kind and took a family picture of us (which I'm sure will end up on the family calendar for 2010). If you look close in the family picture you can see Hope's little hat in the bottom.

Can't wait to see Hope later today, Santa brought her some finger puppets and you can be guaranteed that Aunt Em will be putting on a puppet show today!!! The Santa Bear and Zebra will be visiting hope shortly....

Daily Hope: Monday

Hope: Day 15

Hope LOVES her Santa hat, or at least she looks like she does!! She had a great night last night. She has a little bit of a staph infection, or something to that effect, but they are working with some antibiotics and should have that contained and controlled. They are also working on weening her off of one of the other drugs that she is on, but I can't remember which one. The doctors are very encouraged by all of Hope's good work.

Hope has been a real soldier in her 15 days here. Hope doesn't even know but she has people everywhere praying for her and watching out for her. And now, she has another angel in heaven. Saturday night Hope's great-great-Aunt Shirley joined the ranks of guardian angels watching over her. She's got a whole crew up there making sure things go well!! Aunt Shirley didn't even get to meet Hope but I know that she's going to make sure everything is ok.

Today being Monday, the 22nd, means that only a day and a half before Aunt Em gets to see Hope again!! While the weather and mother nature have thrown a wrench in MY plans for traveling to Michigan before Indianapolis causing me to cancel the Michigan portion of the holiday tour, the good news is that Aunt Em will be seeing Hope sooner! Hope better be ready because there is a lot of loving coming her way on Wednesday!