Icatar Family Blog

Isabella’s white counts have climbed so she’s no longer neutropenic (low white counts that make her susceptible to infections), but her platelets count is low.  This means we’ll have to go into the City tomorrow for a platelet infusion, but that should be it for this round.  We’ll have to discuss with our oncologist what the next steps are, but it won’t be for another week or two.

In other news, the snow came a day late to give us a white Christmas.  Oh well.  That didn’t stop us from having a great Christmas.  Here are a bunch of pictures and a video from the last couple of days.  Click on the picture to see a larger view.

Annalise in front of the festively lit Empire State Building.

Isabella laughs as she wears her reindeer antlers.

Annalise and Isabella help decorate the door with snowflakes.

Here we are for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of pierogies, fish sticks and green beans substituting for peas.

Even though we didn’t have any time to shop, Santa came by with lots of gifts for the kids.  This also included some handmade, custom stockings for everyone in the family!

Nathaniel wears his new tool belt.

Isabella poses with her favorite new toy, a remote control walking puppy she named Snowflake.

Annalise made this cool ornament at school.  It has a transparent picture of her inside the ornament.

Nathaniel and Isabella venture out into the snow before the blizzard got really bad!

Annalise and Nathaniel pose by some of the large snow piles in our yard.

And what else are you going to do with all of that snow?  Well build a snow fort, of course!  Here’s a video tour of our snow fort!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from our family to yours!

Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful support you’ve shown.  I hope that you are all able to spend time with your loved ones and enjoy this blessed time with each other.  From our family to yours, we wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!

As promised, we had a great Halloween weekend.  On Friday night, the kids had a Halloween dance at their school.  On Saturday, we went for a nice walk through the New Canaan Nature Center discovery trails.  On Sunday, before the the trick-or-treating festivities, we played in some leaf piles.  As they say, pictures are worth a thousand words, so we have a few thousand words below!

(Click on each picture to see a larger view!)

We recently bought two new pets for the kids, sugar gliders, also known as sugar bears.  These cute little furry animals are part of the marsupial family and come all the way from Australia.  The attractive features they bring as pets are that they are clean, friendly, and need relatively little maintenance.  We’ve had them for about a week now and are still going through the bonding phase, and we think they are getting a little more used to us now. 

Here are a couple pictures and videos of “Oriette” and “Squeeky”, our new sugar gliders.  (FYI, Annalise wanted to name hers Oreo because it was black and white, but since it is a girl, she wanted the name to be more feminine, hence, Oriette!)

Click each picture for a larger view.

 

Here are a couple recent pictures showing some fun that we’ve been having.  Enjoy!

The kids try out this tractor during our visit to the Norwalk Department of Public Works.

Another picture of the kids at the Norwalk DPW.

Roneil getting ready for the first game of the Yankees playoffs.  He’s wearing his Yankees hat, shirt, jacket, snuggie, foam finger, shopping bag, and coffee mug.

Annalise is pretty upset that all the Yankees ice cream is gone!

The kids had their own sleepover party last night.

Isabella shows off a new hand-made shawl from a friend.

The kids enjoy treats from apple picking.  We actually brought a portable scale to the orchard so that we can weigh the apple that Isabella ate.  (By the way, the apple Isabella ate was 104g and 12g of carbs.)

From the odd and bizarre file.  This half eaten apple was still on the tree!

The kids pick out their pumpkin to prepare for Halloween.

Traditionally, the Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial end of Summer.  To say farewell to summer, we decided to rent a bounce house and ended up picking the Disney Princess 5-in-1 Combo bounce house.  I must say that it was one of the best investments we’ve made as the adults had just as much enjoyment from it than the kids!  Here are a few picture and a video of our fun weekend.

Roneil gets some help from the kids to position the castle in the yard.

The fully inflated castle was huge!

Isabella poses before heading down the slide.

Air Annalise gets some hang time on the basketball hoop.

Grandpa and Isabella get some rest from bouncing.

Grandpa, Isabella and Annalise get ready to slide.

Roneil and Julianne get their share of jumping in the castle.

Today is Nathaniel’s third birthday.  Unfortunately, we haven’t really had the time to plan anything big, so we just sang Happy Birthday to him and let him open a couple gifts.  Here are the cards that his older sisters made for him (click them to see larger versions), plus a couple short videos.