Christmas at The Ronald McDonald House...

Saturday morning I woke up the kids and told them that I had a surprise for them... Really, only Hannah and Micah had any idea what I was talking about. After I got Hannah and Micah dressed I told them that Mia (a great friend of mine) was coming over and we were heading up to The RMH in Chicago for the day. Micah does his bowel and bladder treatments at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and we stay at the RMH while we are there. They were sooooooooooo excited and wanted to know details...

I told Micah that there were going to be 2 VERY special guests there and I wanted him to guess who. He guessed Ronald right away, but was stumped by the second guest. Here was my clue, "Who is the first person that you think of, when you think of Christmas?" He thought a few seconds, and then looked at me very questionably. He said with a lot of question in his voice, "Jesus is going to be there?" I almost laughed out loud and then quickly caught myself!!! I said, "No, not Jesus, but I am sooooooo glad that He is who you thought of first!!!" Okay, who do you think of second... Then he thought of Santa. (Don't ask me why I was surprised about the Jesus response, I just was...) Who is the bad parent now??? :-) I guess I was surprised that what we are teaching is actually rising over secular Christmas and advertising!!!

So, we all get ready and head to Chicago. The kids did great on the 3 hour drive there, and we were so excited to see all of our friends from the RMH. Micah has been on first name basis with the workers and volunteers since his first stay back in 2005. Our first stay was for a month, and all of our stays since then have been for 2 weeks each time. We are always outpatient, so we get to be at the House a lot.

The kids were very excited that McDonald's had catered, and that there were LOTS of goodies... Micah did a craft with Make A Wish volunteers. Then Ronald did some things with the kids. After Ronald, Santa came and every child was speechless!!! All the kids gathered around, and he had a large bag of presents for each of them...

Jonas fell asleep right as Santa came, so I don't have any pics of him with Santa...:-( I realized when I got home...no pics of Jonas at all... sorry!!! I was busy keeping track of the 4 of them, and did not take a lot of pics... The quality of the photos are not great either. I used our video cam to take pics, and they are just not great. they are supposed to be high-res, but I am just not seeing it... :-)