The Adventure Continues--in Yellowstone

Heading back to 2014...yep, still have more to post!  I am determined to catch up!  The hardest part is cutting down the pictures--with three people taking pictures, it's a lot to sort through!

Emily made it back to the U.S. and spent some time visiting with family and friends before heading to Pennsylvania to start her graduate studies. 

The day she arrived at our house we went straight out to Yellowstone, one of the treasures of the States that she hadn't yet seen.  River stayed with J's parents since we were tenting it for three days--we didn't want to deal with the stress of a seven month old in a tent.  We met up with Mike, whom we grew up with as a brother, his girlfriend, Mecala, and his two kids, Z and R.  I hadn't seen Mike in years, so it was a lot of fun to catch up.  They were only at Yellowstone for a day, so we spent the day with them, riding around in their RV.  It rained off and on throughout the day, but we didn't let that stop us!

 We made pita pizzas for dinner.  It was a fun idea I found in a camping cookbook.  They were pretty yummy! 

 Then we made s'mores!

Emily and Mike "fighting"

All snuggled up!

Family Pictures 2015

 We had family pictures taken early in November.  I am actually very pleased with how they turned out!  My favorites are of the girls at the end.  The photographer had suckers and River would not give hers up so we just went with it.  

We had an indoor photoshoot because any time we try an outdoor one with Kai, the sun is too much for him and he always has his arm over his eyes.  With the indoor shoot, Kai didn't cover his eyes at all, and other than playing with his ballard and bringing his hands up to his mouth, we were able to get some really fabulous shots of him.  It makes me so happy!

Ear Update

Just a quick update: Kai is recovering well from surgery.  We had his follow-up appointment with his ENT and other than some severe granulation tissue build-up, all looks great with his ear.  We are hoping that his ear canals will stay wide open.  The granulation tissue (which is a normal thing) was actually visible when you looked into his ear, and Dr. M used tweezers to pull it out.  Needless to say, Kai was in quite a bit of pain that day.  Thankfully, he is back to his happy self and his ear seems to be healing quite nicely now.

There had also been some unexpected bone growth in his ears in between surgeries.  Dr. M said that the bone growth isn't a bad thing as long as it doesn't cause his ear drum to recede back into the pocket it had been in previously.  So far so good, but depending on how things go, this might not be his last ear surgery after all.  The good news is, they didn't find any more of the cholesteotoma (the infection).