I hope your Christmas season has been blessed! I hope it was a good time to build some positive memories with your family/friends, rejuvinate and of course ponder some about the real meaning of Christmas!
Our camera acted up yesterday and today we forgot it so no recent photos at this point. Tianna had her first ice skating experience on wednesday and held her feet pretty steadily; Kjersten had double bladed skates which boosted her confidence level as she could move without falling (well, usually). Tianna *almost* licked the ice on the ground but stopped her in time. Unfortunately I wasn't so fast a couple of days ago when she licked a metal post in our yard. I *tried* to keep her from pulling her tongue off and having Kjersten get Carl so he could get warm water or something, but she pulled it off anyway and had a bloody tongue and bruising for a couple of days. Hopefully she's learned her lesson!
Kjersten's choir sang yesterday for a christmas eve family service at church. I didn't mention to her that her Grandma and Grandpa Erickson were going, and you shoul've seen her when Grandpa went to the front to get a picture!!! She was grinning from ear to ear, jumping and dancing before, during and after the songs were done- only half singing and barily watching her choir director (mind you-- the not watchng her choir director was not limited to yesterdays performance it's just her level of enthusiasm was MUCH greater yesterday).
We went to my sister-in-law Kari's house for Christmas Eve and then today went ice skating and dinner at Carl's other sister Janel's house (unfortunately Janel, David (her husband) and daughter couldn't be there- see story below). Tianna and Nathaniel stayed with Grandma while the rest of us skated-- Tianna's been running a fever and has a bad cough but happy to play. It was Kjersten's and my first time skating on a frozen lake or even being on top of a frozen lake! After awhile she also tried snow-shoeing with her brand new bear claw shaped snow shoes. Our poor neice Ingrid (Janel's daughter) got whacked in the chin/lower lip with the blade of skate and had to be rushed to the ER with a pretty deep gash and lots of bleeding!!! She was getting stiches and I'm sure in a lot of pain, when the rest of us sat down for supper after 7 or 7:30 pm. We were back at Janel's house warming up when this happened, but I hear it was pretty bad (as you'd imagine if she was getting stiches)... Poor girl-- not quite the kind of memory you'd want to have for a Christmas day. Hopefully there won't be any noticeable scars when all the healing takes place.
Other brief news: Nathaniel has started to wave! He is enjoying eating all kinds of finger foods (I'm try to give him lots of high calorie foods because unlike my daughers were, his weights is at a very low percentile for his age) and crawling and cruising all over. He LOVES to trill his tongue, and I've heard him making clicking sounds and raspberries as well as your usual babble. He's such a pleasent little baby! Kjersten's been doing reading lessons in the "How to Teach Your child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" book and is on lesson 41 right now and thrilled with her new ability-- even figured out how to spell Ingrid's name all by herself (except omitting the n). Tianna's been very intersted in Kjersten's reading book, so we have taken up doing her own 'reading' lesson called 'squishy letters'. We have some squishy fabric letters my Aunt Pam sent a couple of years ago. So we took those out and have been using those to learn letters. She has quite a few down pretty well.

One of the nice things with Carl working for a park system is that we know when special events are going on! Carl called me this morning to say that there was a candy cane hunt going on this afternoon and we ought to get the kids to it. The kids had a lot of fun: hunting for candy canes stuck in the snow, eating s'mores, coloring pictures, doing a winter obstacle course (including climbing over small snowy hills, climbing through tunnels, jumping over things-- quite comical to observe since the snow was deep enough they couldn't exactly move quickly), and going on a carriage ride. There was a man dressed up like Santa Clause and Kjersten now insists that I am wrong-- Santa Claus really DOES exist and is alive and well! Sigh! I try to make sure I only teach my children about the true meaning of Christmas, but the world around us does a good job emphasizing other things. I know teaching about Santa isn't the worst thing in the world, but I just really don't want that to be the focus of the Christmas season.















We finally got a tree-- a big one would be too big to handle at this point and we're doing our primarily celebration at Kari's house, but the kids would've been disappointed without one. The nicest two things were the price tag: $4.64! :) (thrift store special that was 50% off the original price!) and it has fiberoptic lights imbeded into the tree, so no need to try to string lights and now burned out bulbs! :) Kjersten did all the decorating herself!

Not a whole lot of big news around here these days. I guess it really IS winter, after having two snow storms in 3 days, with about 8-9 inches of snow so far, reality is sinking in. We expect more snow tomorrow and later on in the week too! Maybe I'll see a 'real' Minnesota winter this year (people tell me I have not seen a real winter in my four years here). Nathaniel has 3 teeth and is not only crawling all over but is also crusing between pieces of furnature and around furnature and starting to get in to things. That's probably the biggest news around here! We had a low-key Thanksgiving with the rest of the Ericksons gone we decided to make it a day at home. Given the hectic pace of life, it was a nice thing to just stay home. For Christmas Carl's folks will be coming to Minnesota and all of the Ericksons will be around so that will be a bit more eventful. Kjersten will have a choir performance on Christmas Eve (as part of the church service). Nathaniel will be baby Jesus in the Thursday night church manger scene next week (which means Carl and I will be Joseph and Mary)-- that's the night we go to church since Carl works sunday mornings now. I guess that's the main news around here!

Oh, some miscillaneous updates...
It was pointed out to me that I had never updated on Naomi's daughter, who I'd asked for prayer awhile back. She is doing FINE now, Thank God, her body is healed and almost back to her normal weight again after having her big ordeal (including being med-evaced to South Africa and in ICU before undergoing exploratory surgery, and a lot more). The conclusion seems to be she had Typhoid. Anyway, those prayers were answered!
Other news...
Carl went hunting this past weekend and had a good year for deer hunting season- he caught two deer! That'll mean a few hundred pounds of good venison (none of that hormone filled meat you buy in the grocery store). So, that's nice.
Um... Did I say before that Nathaniel's crawling? He has been crawling for a few weeks now. He loves to stand too, though still falls over, but he's learning to pull himself up to standing and has attempted to cruise around the coffee table (hasn't gotten very far).
Kjersten is now attending preschool where I work and for the most part has been really having a good experience. She's usually content to stay and wishes she could stay all day or go every day, but alas that's not possible for us to do. Her reaction is much more of a typical Kjersten reaction to a social situation most of the time, so hopefully that'll keep up. She had once choir performance at church and will be singing again this coming sunday. She's learning how to read right now and is very enthusiastic and catching on very well.
Tianna... I have some hope she might be maturing a little. I notice that she stops doing what she is doing if she sees Nathaniel getting into things-- she'll go over to him after watching him a second, and try to stop him from doing it. One time she told him to stop touching my vaccum because it was mine (that would never stop HER from messing with it!!!). She's coming along with her potty training, which is great news, though this is still a process we'll be dealing with for a while. She was recently switched to speech-only services through the school district, having graduated out of needing a special education teacher and now only has speech therapy. Eventually she'll join some sort of speech group with other kids, but at this point we weren't comfortable having her bussed that far.
I need to get to bed, so all for now.

It's been awhile since I posted on here, and am trying to recall what I last wrote... The latest news is about Tianna. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, Tianna has made huge gains this past year with her speech-- she speaks quite a lot and has no trouble trying to express her opinions. We can usually understand her invdividual words, though still hypernasal, but sentences are harder to understand (again, being familiar listeners to her we can usually decipher what she's saying, but some people less familiar with her don't understand that much or the whole content of what she is saying. We mentioned this at her last check-up with her plastic surgeon, and said that her hypernasality is the only thing that's of great concern to us at this point (at least in terms of what would affect him and what he does!!! :)). We had asked about a surgical procedure that is supposed to help correct this-- a previous speech therapist had given the impression that part of Tianna's speech issues would be corrected with surgry. Her plastic surgeon hadn't thought she sounded that impaired from the little bit that he heard... anyway, this week Tianna was supposed to have a nasometry and a nasendoscopy exam to get concrete measures of air flow and palate closure. Well, the nasometer was broken so that couldn't be measured, so the speech therapists worked on some testing procedures so they could get their own speech sample and also to prepare Tianna for words she'd have to say for her nasendoscopy. At the nasendoscopy Tianna had to sniff up some local anesthetic and then a fiberoptic tube that has a camera inside was inserted into her nostril (on the side where she did not have a cleft). She was about as good of a sport as a 2.5 year old could be-- Carl had to pin her down and I helped hold her head in place. Once she stopped crying, she actually did give some word samples of words that would particularly show areas that challenges could exist-- enough for them to get a recording of her. The results were mixed-- Tianna was able to close the openning between her mouth and nose for one word, but other words showed only partial closure, which means she is able to close that area off, but is very inconsistent with this ability. It seems the problem occurs more in the context of sentences than individual words. Her plastic surgeon said that Tianna's still young to be doing a pharyngeal flap surgery, but that with how severe her cleft was and based on these findings she probably will be a candidate for this surgery. In another 6 months we will redo the nasendoscopy and see what, if any, changes have occured over this time frame. If not much, she'll likely have the pharyngeal flap. As I have been doing research on this, I guess I just want prayer that we will know what is right for our little girl. She definately needs to improve her speech intelligability, but there are risks for this procedure- including obstructive sleep apnea (and with Tianna already sometimes being a snorer, I guess I wonder if she's already at risk for that-- and sleep apnea can get pretty signficantly worse with this procedure) as well as the possibility of developing hyponasal speech (so she'd be unable to make nasal sounds-- sounding like she had a cold alll the time-- and this could be problematic for her with trying to speak any portuguese!). I certainly want her to be able to make sounds clearly and not be self-conscious about her speech. I know if the risks were huge the procedure wouldn't be done... I guess I just don't want other problems to develop when correcting another problem! So I ask for prayers-- that the right decision for Tianna will be made when the time is right.
Other news in our family: Carl is actually working day shift (really early day shift 5AM-1:30) at hsi job and is working at a location closer to home. So, amazingly enough we're all home at night time! I think Carl and I are both still worn out from the life we've been leading of working opposite hours for so long that we're both pretty out of it and not always taking advantage of the time we have now. Hopefully we'll both begin to feel more rested and energized.
Kjersten started pre-school but we pulled her out of that program as it seemed to not be a healthy fit for our daughter who is normally a social butterfly. :) She is now going to a pre-school program one day a week with Tianna, Nathaniel and I through Minneapolis public schools, and will hopefully begin a two mornings a week preschool through Fraser, which is the organization that I work for. Nathaniel is able to sit up now and now has two teeth. He scoots around on his tummy, though I keep expecting him to crawl as he's been rocking on all fours for a few weeks now. He's slowly starting to eat solids. It's been a little hard to figure out what to feed him because he doesn't like baby foods and only wants what he sees us eating. The problem being that if I am making sandwiches, he doesn't have the ability to manage that kind of food at this point. We ate lasagna a couple weeks back and he loved that sauce quite a bit, and likes cookies. I've fed him vegetable soup and mashed bananas or mashed canned peaches or mashed avacado... he seems to almost consistently like bananas, but otherwise will eat stuff one time and then refuse to open his mouth the next time. So the food intake isn't changing very quickly.
I began selling Party Lite candles as a fun side job about a montha go and am enjoying it so far. If you're at all interested in seeing their products, I've made a link to my business website as one of the links on this web page.

Our mini vacation! We went to Lake Itasca, which is the lake where the Mississippi river originates, to go camping with the extended Erickson family. Besides us were Carl's parents (who flew in from Texas for the occasion), sister Kari, and sister Janel, her husband David, and kids George and Ingrid. We could only be gone for a couple of days, but getting out of town and being with family was a lot of fun and a much needed break. We've had unusually dry, drought conditions much of the summer. This month has seen more rain, and we happened to get rain while camping too! We were using an old tent, which leaks rain, so Carl ended up having to go to a town 30 miles away to get a tarp that was big enough to cover up the tend! Our last day of camping was beautiful, so we got to get out and do some sight seeing and playing at the beach.

our tent after Carl covered it with the tarp!












Kjersten making smores by the fire. Yum! :)

Some random pictures of our kids from this month. As you can see, Nathaniel is drooling up a storm! No more sign of teeth than when he first started drooling 2-3 months ago. He's now able to push himself up into all fours and can also move around a bit when on his tummy (can move about 1-2 feet, given enough time). He's started activating one cause and effect toy with purpose and is growing like a week. Nathaniel continues to love standing up, with help, and being doted on or talked to. Tianna is very social, cheerful, and is very motivated to explore the world. Hopefully we'll be able to potty train her one of these days, when life's craziness slows down (am I dreaming? will that day ever come?). She continues to receive some speech therapy, but her language skils are where they should be for a child of her age, which is great. We're thinking right now that she'll be a mountain climber, an acrobat, or an engineer when she grows up, judging the heights she'll climb, her fearlessness of movement, and her smart way of figuring out how to orchestrate furnature in such a way that she can climb heights that her parents didn't think she was able to reach! Kjersten is becoming such a big girl! She doesn't look like a toddler at all, and looks more and more like a child who could be going to Kindergarten (though that's a year off for her). We're trying to give her many social opportunities as possible. She's a smart girl who invents songs and loves to tie knots into any string that she can find in our house. She loves her baby brother a great deal and he grins at her.

Our annual trip to Valleyfair! It was a fun day of many rides. Carl's sister Janel and kids George and Ingrid joined us this year. It certainly is different trying to go to the fair with three rather than two kids of our own. We didn't end up having quite the energy to stay a long this year, but we had fun.

We recently heard that my sister (Andrea's) second oldest daughter Emily, who is 7 years old, is very sick and in thehospital. She has apparently been unable to keep foods down, having ver loose stools, a fever that isn't breaking, and significant level of stomach pain. Also, her white blood cell count is very low right now, which is also very concerning. She has tested positive for E. Coli and also thought to be infected with Typhoid, though that's uncomfirmed yet. Please pray she will stop loosing fluids, get relief from pain, have a boost in her immune system to fight infection. pray they can find definitive conclusions about what all she is fighting and have treatments to help. Pray also for Naomi & Tim, Emily's parents, that they can get rest and have thesupport and encouragement that they need. If you want more details, go to their blog: http://theformeroptimist.blogspot.com/

Recent photo- The Brasilian church in town that we are involved in had a Festa Junina party in July. My girls already had Festa Junina dresses which my paents brought to the US last summer as dress up clothes for the kids. So they were able to get dressed up for the occasion! :)

I've gotten several messages from people out of state asking if we were OK and if we knew anyone injured in the 35W bridge collapse yesterday. We are all fine, and Carl's sisters and their families are fine also, and were not anywhere near that highway (I was Kjersten, in her tumbling class just a few short miles away, but drive there on surface streets). It IS a major road here in town and I usually drive it about once per week, last time being this past monday. We don't know any names of victims at this point, but so far have not heard of anyone I know being missing. Hopefully we won't know of anyone when everyone is accounted for!
I plan to post some new pictures soon, but have not been able to do so yet due to time constraints.
Updates on our kids: Kjersten had her first sleep-over with a friend of hers from tumbling class last night- I'm anxious to hear her talk about it when i get home today. Tianna- continues to climb things we don't think she can climb, but is doing well on the whole. She's been discharged from outpatient speech therapy at this time, but still gets weekly speech therapy from schools. Her articulation remains her biggest issue, but her language skills are otherwise age appropriate. She will see her orthodontist and have a check-up with her plastic surgeon later this month. Nathaniel- he has started making some consanant sounds in the past few days, tries to get up onto his knees when on his tummy in prep for crawling, and loves to suck on his hands.