Portrait Time!

Hooray hooray it's one of our favorite times of year - the time when, for the price of 2 overpriced and astoundingly terrible sets of school photos Mommy gets to enjoy beautiful portraits of her gorgeous littles.

Check out this year's masterpieces!

Adorable heartbreakers every one!

Ski Team Prep

It's October - that means it's ski season preparation month! Hooray!

This year we took the prep up a notch with 4 days of ski team training at Copper Mountain, Colorado for the Morningstar boys! Here's what I know about the trip:

• Judging from this, the only photo I received, they did arrive in Colorado with all ski gear
• Sam: It was good. There was snow.
• Ben: Skiing in October is really warm
• Ben: Our condo had a tub with jets. I didn't realize you have to put a certain amount of water in or else it makes a big mess.
• Sam: Our condo had RFID cards for the doors, but they didn't have RFID for the lifts, just regular stickers (Sam found this ironic)
• Both boys: We had to jog every morning. Me: Um. Were you supposed to bring sneakers? Boys: Nah, we just did it in Crocs.
• Sam: I think ski team will be fun (this is Sam's first year on the team)
• Ben: Sam is slow (this is Sam's first year on the team

While the boys were in Colorado the girls were doing their own ski team prep by practicing their bike slalom. They did great with their leaning and turn initiation and we only had a few collisions. Good thing ski racers are tough!

We are officially ready for winter, ski season, and especially ski team - now we just need some snow to seal the deal!

Ying's second time having surgery

by WanYing

A little background from Mom: WanYing was born with limb differences caused by Amniotic Banding Syndrome. Her right hand was most affected and shortly after coming home at age two she had hand surgery to free the fingers of her right hand. WanYing's right thumb was very short and at the time of surgery her hand doctor told us that in time we might want to lower the webbing between the thumb and first finger of her right hand to give her thumb more relative length. 

This summer at her yearly hand checkup, WanYing's hand doctor said she thought this was a good time for the touch-up surgery. WanYing had been asking about having the first two toes of her right foot separated as well and her doctor said that she could do both surgeries together.

The bandages just came off and WanYing is getting used to her new digits - here's WanYing's description of the experience.

WanYing's hand and foot before surgery

I had surgery before but now I got surgery again so I can use my thumb better. Before surgery my toe was stuck together but now it's not. And on my hand that got surgery my thumb was very short and now it's bigger.

One time when I had my other surgery every one except my pinky was stuck together but then I had surgery and then it was not stuck together.

It feeled weird when my dad played with it where my stitches were. It felt weird because it was my first time having something between my fingers. [This part was really funny - she was so sensitive to having Band Aids put between her toes because he had never experienced the sensation of anything between those toes before!]

I got to play with Play Doh before I had surgery. Playing with Play Doh made me feel great and there was also like a frigerator and it had food shapes in it so we could make Play Doh stuff. And they said that I hadded to take the Play Doh home so now I have new Play Doh! [The Shriner's Hospital staff did such a great job of helping WanYing feel comfortable and secure!]

Then after the Play Doh I changed in the bathroom into my doctor clothes. I got to bring McGillicuddy to hold.

Then we got out our blanket and they set the bed down and then I hopped into the bed and then they gave me sleeping medicine then I went to sleep. [WanYing definitely doesn't remember this picture - she was pretty doped up by this point!]

And then I was asleep for a while and when I was asleep they did surgery.

And then I woke up and I had a chicken soup and I had Goldfish - and I had two packs of goldfish. And then we went home

And now we're at home taking our pictures of my foot and my hand. The bandage is off my hand and my foot

My thumb's bigger now and I feel great because now I have a bigger thumb