hi:) a few more picts. ian is doing well. the only problem, and the continued problem is sleep, but that is nothing new for our household. both kids. but otherwise ian is doing great! getting around. he misses walking, cause he moved way faster - but he's crawling, scooting, hobbling around tables and couches...he gets checked by the surgeon october 10th. hopefully the cast will come off then. we've had such gorgeous weather - loving it! keira sees her sleep doctor at the stollery again this week. to date they haven't been able to help at all, after all their testing, but we'll followup :) super nice doctor. today was hannah's 5th bday! last weekend we took the kids acrossed the ferry and did some trails in the sandhills...had a picnic...it was gorgeous! angie and wally came over last night (saturday) and ang took some picts and then the 4 of us went out for a yummy supper at bp's in westlock. lots of fun:) ian has a child development coordinator that comes monthly from aspen health. that was this past week, and they're noticing some development so that's great! i'm not just dreaming it! tonight he was such a parrot at the supper table - it was so much fun:) keira is doing well. when ian had his surgery she slept at aunty kerry's and uncle matt's...she's missed levi. they came over on friday, and levi and keira wanted to have another sleepover but we said no. :) we considered music lessons for her, but things are just too busy. michelle werkman (from carl) is doing a bi-weekly preschool since her youngest is keira's age so that should be fun. and keira and levi start swimming lessons again soon, so that will be enough:) getting way to grown up!!! keira and ian love looking at family picts on the walls, and pointing at uncles and aunts. ian's favorites are the grandpa's and grandma's and for some reason ;) uncle drew, aunty julie and uncle paul. maybe it's just cause he can say their names, i don't know;) keira knows mostly everyone. anyways, hope this finds everyone doing well! kev and i are doing good. love and hi to everyone:)

there’s more picts on our cell phone yet…

but kevin’s reading a book on there right now, so i will upload those later.  oh yes, and aunty heidi and uncle ken visited us last night. 

waiting...everybody waits:)

before we head to the hospital...

Hi! So...ian now has his 2nd set of tubes, and is missing his adenoids! on to the more important surgery - they were able to partially repair his foot. He has unusual muscles in his feet; often in this surgery they will pull muscles to tighten up the foot, but ians muscles aren't very elastic...they're rigid. They weren't able to repair it as much as they hoped...there will be more surgeries down the road. It's better than what it was, but he's too young right now for bone surgery. Then to his tibia - this was separate from his foot - they cut his tibia (lower leg bone), turned it and placed some pins in. In 4 weeks we will take the cast off, hopefully remove pins and go from there. All along we have heard - 'your son has an usual foot'. one of the residents on the surgery team elaborated a bit on that while we were waiting for our surgeon to arrive this morning...he told us that dr. mcivor is close to retirement, he's been at the stollery and has his own office and has been doing specialty surgeries like this for a long time...anyways, in his whole career he has never seen a foot like ian's. not necessarily a good thing:) there is no clear course to improve it. Our physiatrist (Dr. Watt) from the glenrose had been hoping for a muscle biopsy...our surgery that was supposed to happen at 12:50pm did not occur till 4pm and the muscle biopsy team was already done for the day. so we missed out on that which was too bad. dr. watt is pretty sure he doesn't have a muscle disease, but he was hoping for a muscle biopsy just to confirm it. so. we shall see how it goes. ian is hanging in there. tubes and adenoids already make kids pretty miserable; now our very active boy can't walk, crawl, can't go in the tub...he's pretty upset:) but all kids at this age are mobile, and this is hopefully just for 4 weeks so we shall see. there is much to be thankful for (that is easy to see at the stollery!) this is now behind us, and now we can move forward. we shared a room last night with a little 4 month old girl who was having surgery on her cleft palate...cute little lady! made for a long night ;) but now we're home!!! hope this finds everyone else doing well!!! much love, the van grootheest's picts to come soon

some picts of the kids