It’s hard to believe she is turning eight! I am overwhelmed with joy at the awesome person Elizabeth is turning into, while at the same time, I’m feeling very sad at how fast this is all seeming to happen!
I’m sure that in eight more years, she’ll be turning 16 and I’ll be feeling similar feelings of happiness and sadness, so I really need to just be ‘in the moment’ right now and enjoy every moment of “eight” that I can!
Our little baby Nate just turned 5! It’s hard to believe that our little guy is five years old!
Time sure has flown by since he was born at Harris Methodist Hospital in Ft. Worth, Texas!
This is our second time to go to this Pumpkin Patch, the last time we were in Texas, we brought Elizabeth and Anna here… so I guess now it’s become an official ‘Tradition’!
And now, back to 2012, with the Webel SEVEN at the Pumpkin Patch!
As our family prepares to return to China, one of the (many) things that is on our list of high priority tasks to accomplish is to get everyone’s immunizations up-to-date. Getting immunizations, especially the ‘travel immunizations’ that are not offered at the normal places, are not fun! However, they are necessary if we are going to travel to the places God has called us to go and they are potentially life-saving, so we are doing them.
(Now if you are one of the Dr. Mercola disciples that is against immunizations, go ahead and stop reading this blog post, medical facts and best practices don’t seem to interest you anyway.)
Our family has to have all the ‘normal’ immunizations, but then we have to take it up a level and get immunized against some nasty things that are usually not huge problems here in North America, things like “Japanese Encephalitis”, “Yellow Fever”, “Rabies”, “Hep A, B,” “Typhoid”. I know, fun stuff! Continue reading
Hope celebrated her 1st birthday, I believe the cake was the highlight!
Look at those pieces of cake fly!
It’s hard work smashing a cake!
Hi mom, dad said it was okay to do this… really, he did!
The big sister’s trying to capture the moment.
Wow, what an amazing journey our family has been on this past year! I can say with certainty, that this has been the most difficult year of my life. I believe firmly that everything that happens in our lives is within the sovereign plan of our Creator, even though it is sometimes difficult or impossible to fathom, how what is happening at the time, could be part of God’s ‘plan’. This year was one of those years, where our life’s circumstances, as we were experiencing them, were hard to reconcile as being part of God’s plan for our lives! Thankfully, I have learned (and I’m still learning) that my perspective of my circumstances is quite limited and not very good at revealing the big picture of God’s grace and His glory. Continue reading
Luke has finally been discharged from the NICU and is home along with Erica and the rest of the family! His release from the hospital came upon us quickly and a bit unexpected. On Friday, we had a very outgoing NICU nurse (named Elizabeth) who also seemed very pro-active in moving Luke along in his feedings. She informed us when we arrived around lunch time on Friday that Luke was doing very good and in her opinion, could go home as early as Sunday – but then she warned us to not get our hopes up.
Shortly after that, the NICU doctor on call that day showed up and started to tell us how pleased she was with Luke’s progress and that he could possibly go home as early as Sunday! So our hopes were officially raised. The key benchmark for Luke to meet was for him to manage 16 feedings in a 48 hour period (without having to use the feeding tube). He had been eating 8 meals per day, but they were a combination of eating via bottles, Erica feeding him, and eating via his feeding tube. When we asked when the last time he had been fed via his feeding tube, they looked it up, and it was at noon on Thursday – so he had already gone 24 hours without having to use it! Continue reading
Our life has kinda a ‘blur’ lately. If you’ve been following our family’s story, I’m sure you understand! It’s been a few days since I updated everyone here on my blog, so I thought I needed to give an update!
Luke is still in the NICU, but he has been making consistent progress over the past few days! Because he was not having any more troubles keeping his body temp up, he was moved from his special ‘bed’ with the warmer to a normal hospital crib. He has also been pretty consistently keeping his breathing at a more normal (slower) pace. Occasionally his breathing slows way down and sounds the Apnea(?) alarm, but his nurses have not seemed concerned about it. I guess a little bit of that is not a big problem! Continue reading
It’s been a couple of days, so I wanted to write and update you on what is happening with Luke and Erica.
Erica was discharged from the hospital yesterday. After spending 39 days in the hospital (most of that pre-birth) she was very ready to return home! The family was also very excited to finally have Mom back home! Erica’s surgery was extensive, but it went about as smoothly as it possibly could. However, Erica has a longer road to recovery than normal. Continue reading
