Aliyah on death

Aliyah was just telling me about playing dolls with Shayel.

Aliyah: prince dead
Me (holding back comments about the artist formerly known as… hehe): how did he die?
Aliyah: bad guys
Me: oh yeah? the bad guys made him dead?
Aliyah: yeah, prince sick, need bubble gum and medicine

Shayelism – sickness

Shayel has a cold and yesterday was the peak of it. This morning I asked her how she is feeling and she said.

“better, I can feel my muscles now. Yesterday I couldn’t feel my muscles but now I can *flex muscles while grunting to demonstrate*”

Isn’t that such a great way to describe that lethargic feeling you get when sick?

Christmas Recap

Christmas was a little “odd” this year since Grandma went into hospice and passed within just a few days’ time all around the holiday time.

But it was still very nice as always. We’ve been fortunate the last couple years to have more money than we have in the past. This year I even bought some more decorations which was really fun. So this is how Christmas was for the Fishers:

We were getting ready to go to a local ELCA service on Sunday when we got the call that David’s grandma was in hospice and wasn’t expected to live much past the next few hours.

So that all changed quickly. since we only have one car we got groceries that we needed and took care of a house we were house sitting and then David went to Denver to be with his family. He spent the rest of Sunday there and got home about 11pm.

Christmas Eve we hung out for a bit in the morning, took care of the house sitting house, I made cinnamon rolls, and then had gift opening for our family – the girls opened the gifts from us to them and then played with their new things until it was time to go to my parents’. On the way there, around 3pm, David called his mom to get an update on his Grandma, she was taking her last breaths and within 20 minutes or so after arriving at my parents’ she had passed. So that was sad but expected.

We were scheduled to go to David’s mom’s for Christmas day and she still wanted to do that but didn’t have much in the way of food so David went to the store before dinner at my parents’ to get some fixin’s since we didn’t know what would be open Christmas Day (turns out lots of markets were). He had a chance to have some time by himself to grieve a little which was good.

Then we had our traditional lamb stew for dinner and opened gifts with my parents. We got home around 10pm because we had to wait for quite a while for my brother to get off work.

Christmas morning the girls got their stockings from “santa” and then we got ready to go to David’s mom’s in Boulder. We spent the day there and then went home in the afternoon. Usually we go to David’s aunts’ for Christmas afternoon but she wasn’t up to it after spending the past several days with Grandma between the hospital and hospice. But she did bring gifts over and we each had something from Grandma to open.

So…we never made it to church which was weird but under the circumstances, Christmas was pretty typical and the girls loved their gifts.

flashback – 2005

AWEEEE!!!!! my babies.

This is from September 2005. At this time our family was living in Fort Collins in a rental house near City Park Ave. It was a big house but ended up being more house than we needed so we moved the following year into an apartment just a few blocks south – still near City Park. We had been in Fort Collins for about a year after moving there from Loveland. We had just taken over the college ministry at Third Day Victory Church – a ministry that a little over a year later became Revolution and an independent missional community.

Shayel was 3.5 and had gotten out of some of the most difficult phases. Aliyah was about 3 months old and we had finally gotten her reflux under control making her a totally different baby – much more easy going and happy.

getting the macbook fixed

The cd burner on our macbook went kaput on us. So we took it to the apple store in Boulder on Wednesday since David took that day off. We ended up spending the whole day there as our computer wasn’t fixed till 6. We had lunch with a friend and my mother in law at Pei Wei, we bought an ipod to replace the one that someone stole from me, we used a gift card of David’s, we bought the girls a sled, we went to Pearl Street and enjoyed dessert and drinks at the Cheesecake Factory, we hung out at Borders where I bought the happy hooker to refresh and expand my crochet skills and also a gorgeous Russian orthodox icon calendar and THEN FINALLY we got the computer back. It was a long day

But I got a few neat pictures (with my new camera – thanks mom and dad! the flash broke on my Olympus and it would have cost more than a new one to fix it)

cappuccino yum

white chocolate macadamia nut cheesecake – OMG!

ice cream is always better when it gets on your nose

first time sledding

We went sledding yesterday, for the first time ever. Shayel and Aliyah both had a blast. Aliyah even went down herself. We all got very wet and since I don’t have boots or snow pants my butt and and toes were numb after an hour and a half….but it was really fun. We went with some friends, taking advantage of winter break.

My camera ran out of batteries so I didn’t get many pictures but here are a few.

overheard: sweetheart

Aliyah: you sweetheart Shayel.
Shayel: what about mommy?
Aliyah: mommy sweetheart, daddy sweetheart, shayel sweetheart, ms burnett sweetheart (Shayel’s teacher), grandma sweetheart
Shayel: what about great grandma?
Aliyah: great grandma dead
Shayel: yeah but she can still be a sweetheart even though she’s dead
Aliyah: ok, great grandma dead sweetheart
Shayel: yeah, dead sweetheart

Oh man those two crack me up

Memory Eternal: Roberta Malmberg

David’s grandma, Roberta “Bobbie” Malmberg transitioned to her eternal home on Christmas Eve. David was able to see her in hospice on the Sunday before she died. He went to her funeral in Texas that Saturday and returned Tuesday.

Ali-ism

Aliyah consistently calls Shayel “sweetheart.”

Fall pictures

Shayel’s school pic from Kindergarten
Ms. Burnett’s class
Dunn IB World School

A few pics from our annual autumn leaves photo shoot. See the rest here.