Back to School 2009. Kids are all back in public school. Brandon is a senior at Northglenn Highschool, Brianna is a Sophomore. Katelynn is in 5th grade at Hillcrest Elementary. She wants to audition for the Denver School for the Performing Arts for Middle School/Highschool. These are school pics from last year.

Brandon spent 3 weeks this summer abroad as a People 2 People Student Ambassador. He visited Ireland, Wales, England, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. He walked the beach at Normandy where his great grandfather fought, sailed with the Wales Sailing Academy, climbed a castle wall in Ireland, rode the London Eye, saw Anne Frank's hiding spot, and visited his paternal family birthplace in Netherlands. He is working this summer at Water World as a deep water lifeguard. He is currently 6 foot 2 and still growing I think!

Brianna has certainly grown into a beautiful young woman. She will be getting a new motorized wheelchair this fall for school. Her scoliosis is currently at 30%. She got new PINK braces this summer, and we are still planning on oral reconstruction in the next couple years. She got to visit Aunt Janis in Kansas for a week and that made her whole summer!

Katie has been all over this summer and I've hardly seen her at all. Went to Camp Elim for a week, then Kansas, spent time with her cousins when they came to town, and camping with AUnts and Uncles. She is continuing with Children's Chorale this fall in the Apprentice Choir, and is entering a modeling competition in September. She plans on auditioning for Northglenn Youth Theater productions in the fall. We are currently searching for a quality talent agent.

I have been enjoying my summer off from teaching, but have been busy playing with my new group Flute Salad. (flutesalad.com) We have played several gigs in the community and have upcoming performances at Children's Museum and Children's Hospital. We were featured in the August 6th issue of the Denver Post in the Your Hub section. I also played the last year with Thornton Community Band. I will start teaching again with a full schedule in September, and am currently employed by PASCO as a CNA and get paid to perform full time home care for Brianna. We hope to upgrade our vehicles this year with the extra income!

Neal continues to work at Graebel Companies. He is now a blue belt in Tae-Kwon-Do and is still very active in scouting. He will be working exclusively this year with Brandon to finish his Eagle project and badge.

It's back to school time again! We had a very
busy and fun summer. So many things to do, so little time to do it! Here are some pictures of our summer of fun 2007!

Here are my little monkeys at the zoo.

Katie and I spent a week at Camp Elim where we both earned our Scout and Indian
patches for learning verses!

Jumping rope at sports camp

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Cast of "Don't Kick the Turkeys". The whole family was involved in this
production. Linda directed and acted, Katelynn had a "bouncing" walk on part,
Brandon and Neal did the lights and sound.

Water World

Happy Easter! We spent a very shivery morning at church celebrating our Saviour's resurection. I performed with the puppet cast and then we watched Billy Sprague play his "Via Dolorosa" via satelite on the actual Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. What an awesome experience! We spent the afternoon with family watching the snow fall down, and then by 6:00 pm the sun was shining and the snow was gone! I got to hold my new nephew for a while, Morgan Joseph. It was a wonderful day!

A couple weeks ago Brianna broke her right arm. She is getting much more independent now, can move from chair to chair mostly on her own. Sometimes she needs a hand, and she always needs to be supervised, especially in the morning when her legs aren't warmed up yet. She had tried to move from her bed to her chair before I could get there to help her, and she fell on her useless left arm. Because she couldn't move it or catch herself, all her weight fell on it. She has a buckle fracture on the right radius. So, now she wears a bright pink cast for a few weeks! At least it wasn't the good arm! She is really excelling in school now too. She is so much more observant of the things around her, and is retaining lots of new information!

Brandon had his first job interview last week at the City of Northglenn. He applied for paddle boat attendant and cashier. The girl in charge of hiring is a friend from church that I also went to school with at Metro. She leads our choir and plays sax. So hopefully that's an in for him. Otherwise he will be applying at Water World. That would be fun too, and his cousins Tim and Kelly will be working there too! Good summer money! He wants to fix up Neal's old truck. He's also working hard on earning his Eagle rank in Scouts.

Katelynn is so excited to get to go to summer camp this year with church. Camp Elim is a Christian camp and some of her friends will be going too. Its for a whole week in June! She will be entering her first beauty pageant in July, competing in formal wear and as a casual wear model. We have a friend who is a model and has been Miss Colorado for several years. She will be coaching Katie on the walk and the talk. Personally, I think she's been watching a bit too much of America's Next Top Model! Hee hee hee! She's also preparing to join Missoula's Children's Theater productions again this summer. In her spare time of course! We are proud to announce that after only 2 months back in public school, she has made the honor roll!

Neal and I have been busy taking care of everyone's needs here at home, and keeping busy with school, church and scouting activities. I am back in music again, drama, teaching, and puppet ministry. Neal is enjoying the men's ministry group, awanas, scouts, and watching me make a fool of myself on stage! I found out I have some damaged veins in my legs, and developed blood clots last month. The left leg had clotted all the way from the top to the bottom. Its very painful. I will have to have them removed in the next year or so in both legs. Anyway, this year is off to a great start for the Luchtenburg family!

Sept 25th Brianna had major brain surgery to remove the right hemisphere of her brain. It took 12 hours. This was an attempt to stop her seizures which had become more damaging and life threatening. We have been hospitalized for 57 days and have had 6 surgeries. 2 weeks after the surgery she couldn't handle the pressure, developed hydrocephalus and needed a lumbar (spinal) shunt placed. That created a vaccum of sorts and cause a herniated brain stem. After a second emergency brain surgery, she had a permanent shunt placed in the brain to remove extra fluid. Then, just 2 weeks ago she developed strep throat that almost put her back into the ICU. They were able to contain it finally, and she is recovering very nicely. She has no movement on her left side, but that is the only lasting effect from all the surgeries and the illness. You can read daily updates on the hospitalization at www.carepages.com, BREEZYMAE.

September 24th we took a last family daytrip for the year. We spent the whole day in Estes Park enjoying nature's beauty. We saw lots of beautiful fall colors, a babbling brook, herds of elk everywhere, and got overloaded with sugar at the salt water taffy shop in town!

Brandon's "New Tree"

The last week of August we took a daytrip up to beautiful Golden Gate Park. As you can see, we all had loads of fun. We hiked the Raccoon Trail, which was 3.5 miles total. Even Brianna made it the whole way without having to be carried! We found Neal's tree and got new pictures of everyone on it, and found a new tree for Brandon that I had to lift him up into: and he weighs 120 lbs!




Katie and Brianna got Junior Ranger badges for completing the booklets while we were out and about. We had to visit different sites, interview a ranger, and investigate stuff at the visitor's center, even went on a scavenger hunt.


















"The Tree"










Such a beautiful meadow!

Brianna will be having her brain surgery on September 25th. It will be a hemispherectomy, where the remove the right hemisphere of her brain. This is an extreme surgery to hopefully correct the lifelong seizures, strokes, headaches, and learning disabilities she has suffered for the last 12 years. So in addition to preparing ourselves for the surgery itself, we have a lot of work to do here at home. Brianna has slept with Neal and I for all of her life and doesn't have her own room. She will need a bed to recover in, and we are renting a hospital bed for the first month.

So, we have been boxing up Brandon's stuff (he's a teenager so there is junk piled kneehigh) and boxing up the den. We need to paint both rooms, and Brandon will be moving downstairs. Brianna will get his old room, painted and decorated with Spiderman. Boy will she be in heaven! Brandon's new room will be gray and black. He has a beautiful dragon cross-stich he is modeling the whole room after.

I keep Brianna's carepage updated as the surgery draws near, and am sure I will be writing new updates every day while she is in hospital. Check it out at www.carepages.com, BREEZYMAE.

(Katie, Justy and Bri at Lakeside)

Well, its August and we are getting ready for Back to School. School starts for the Luchtenburg Academy August 28th. Katie will be starting 2nd grade, Brianna 7th, and Brandon is a 9th grader. One project the girls and I have started is a book club for 2nd and 3rd graders. We meet once a month and discuss fun books, do activities and just chat. Its a great way to meet new friends! Brandon is looking forward to earning his Life scout rank in Sept, and then will start working on his Eagle project. He is also wanting to join the Civil Air Patrol, but we will see how well he keeps up with his homework first! Here is a picture of Brandon at Scout Camp this summer. They went to Medicine Mountain Scout Ranch in South Dakota.

Leatherworking

Brianna has yet to have her brain surgery, so we are just plugging right along with our regular schedules as long as we can. If it gets scheduled in Sept or Oct, we will all be taking off school for a few weeks!

Here she is in Detroit with Sturge-Weber partner Larry Gelfund:

This is Katie in gymnastics earlier this year.

Here is our little "pumpkin", as seen in Cinderella last month. She sang a cute little song with Patches the beggar. Her next show is this Friday evening at 6 pm at Brighton Highschool. She is a busy little bee in Rumplestiltskin.

Here she is back in March in her debut performance as "Abigail" in Catacombs, a full length drama.

She had several scenes including a sick scene, and a death scene.

These are last year's school pictures: