I promise to post some pictures in the next few days, but wanted to say “Happy New Year” and share a few thoughts…

What an eventful year we have had.  God has proven himself over and over and over again to be faithful and full of joy and compassionate and wise beyond anything we could ever have dreamed….In the last year…

Isaac has been “re” diagnosed with Unresolved Primary Central Sleep Apnea of Infancy, has had numerous language and social skill regressions, has seen more doctors than I care to try and list, has endured 2 sleep studies, 1 MRI, 1 ABR hearing test, and more blood draws than I think I’ve had in 28 years of life.  However, God has given him wonderful doctors to care for him. In April, our family doctor asked us to move him to a pediatrician, which we did. We did not choose wisely though and between the new pediatrician and the old pulmonologist, we got fed up and fired them both before the end of July.  In August, Isaac saw a new pediatrician who is wonderful and thoughtful and a great listener. He loves the kids and wants wellness for them, and whatever he can do to ensure it he is willing to do!  He also allows the parents to make the decisions.

Isaac trialed two different asthma medications this fall, which only served to make his heart race and his oxygen levels to plummet. He isn’t taking them anymore!  He has a new sleep neurologist, who ordered one of the two sleep studies he’s had done and is putting a plan together to hopefully kick this apnea thing!  We don’t know yet what that will look like, but are just thankful to not have a doctor write off what can seem so benign one day and deadly the next.  He still sees his regular neurologist for developmental stuff, which is a blessing.  Isaac has not gained weight now in over 5 months, and we (along with all of you) are praying he does before April comes around!

Isaac began speech and occupational therapy this fall as well. This is by far one of the best things we have ever done for him.  He started the new year at a special needs pre-school in our local district. He loved it and is already to go back tomorrow!  His teachers are wonderful (Mrs. Mickevicius and Mrs. Holloway)! I also met the speech therapist today and got to have a nice chat with her on her way to the next place. I am hoping to get more time with her and talk more about what our goals for Isaac are.

Isaac is looking forward to being a big brother in March! He can hardly stand it…He is trying to crawl into my belly to “play with Azariah, please…” and looking for him in the bassinet and singing him songs through my belly button…He is going to be an amazing big brother. He even asked (after quite a biology lesson in child birth) if he can “Catch Azariah swimming pool please!”

Zeb is still with McKenna. He does mapping (GIS) work and lots of on-site stuffs for a township and a city up by Lansing. He hates the commute, but it does pay the bills and provides amazing insurance for Isaac and us! Please pray for wisdom in the coming year about what to do about working closer to home…We certainly don’t want to move away from the Saline area again!

I am not really working anymore. I dabble here and there for families, but am not adding much to my plate. I have enough with Isaac and baby to be born soon…Church is keeping me plenty busy and with so many kids in the church now, we are swamped with things that need our attention.  We have 2 more babies due in the winter/spring….Jenny is due in February and we are due in March!  Our “Fabulous Foursome” are turning 3 this spring and moving up in the world, which is both amazing and sad simultaneously!  They are best of friends and love to hang out together..

The new baby is well. He is growing and moving and all in all driving me crazy! We only have 10 short weeks left until our due date! Can you believe it! He is slated to be born at home with midwives and Zeb and Isaac (if he is awake) and one or two close friends.  He has to make it to February 25th to be old enough to come at home and not at the hospital. I think we’ll do just fine on that one!  He still doesn’t like it when I eat, so that it is still pretty hit or miss. I have lost a little over 50 lbs with this pregnancy (and probably 30 more when he’s born)…I hope to keep it all off and then some!

The new year holds a lot of promise of great things! We are thankful even now, before we see the handiness of God, for all that we know is coming. We are prayerful that our friends, who have spouses that don’t know Jesus will celebrate “birthdays” this year! We are hopeful that our children will continue to be healthy and whole and well cared for. We are thankful for work and health insurance, and shorter drives to the office (maybe?).  We know that we serve a God of miracles and are quite certain that He will continue to either use the medical world to care for our son, or will touch his brain and his body and heal it fully so as to do away with the need of docs!  We are thankful, even now, for a precious new baby that will have 10 fingers and 10 toes, and will be beautiful, healthy, and hungry, and will be a little boy after God’s own heart very young!  God has blessed us. We are fully aware of those blessings…Every morning when we wake up and so does Isaac, we are reminded of how blessed we are…

Don’t take your blessings for granted and use your resources wisely to bless others. This will be a year of building. Not of houses or churches, but of people. A year of building into our children a love of God and all the things He loves. A year of building into other men and women a hunger of His Word and the knowledge of how to effectively study it and teach it to others. This is a year of building people here in Saline, in Michigan, in Arkansas, in the United States, in Mexico, in Zambia, in Malawi, and in places that we will never be able to go to, but can still impact by teaching others who can…

Happy New Year, friends and family! You are loved, prayed for, cherished, and cared for more than you will ever know….Our prayer for you is that as this new year starts, that you would already be thankful for what is coming before it ever does…And if we don’t see you here on this earth…We’ll see you on the other side of eternity in the New Jerusalem!

Your eyes do not deceive you. It was really warm enough for Isaac to run around in shorts and a t-shirt with no jacket! And it was December!!!  We went for a walk to the park close to mom’s house and then for a long walk to get back..We had a blast. Isaac had a lot of great moments at the park.

Walking under the structure…

Musical instruments can be found everywhere!! First the stick is a drumstick, then it’s a baton for conducting!

He went down this tall spiraly slide without any prompting from us! In fact, we didn’t realize he was on it until we saw his feet come out the bottom! He doesn’t usually go down ANY slides that aren’t familiar to him without a significant amount of prompting, so he gets lots of gold stars for this one! He went down several times!

That’s the above picture zoomed, just because we love the smirk on his face!

Part of why mom sent us to Galveston was so that Zeb could go bird watching and see some birds he might not have seen before.  He’ll have to update you on his Life Birds, but we saw a bunch! It was hard to get good pics, but here are a few of the favorites…Including our mystery bird, which we couldn’t figure out til we were home again in Michigan!

Gulls perched just off the ferry that we rode over to Bolivar Penisula.  It was my first ferry ride!!

We finally have an answer. It’s a Life Bird for both Zeb and I. It’s called a Ruddy Turnstone. He was so cute!!

A brown pelican…There tons of them around Galveston. They are amazing birds!

I don’t know that I had ever seen a snowy egret, but I have now!

Quite possibly my favorite bird on the trip. They are ENORMOUS! I know I’ve seen them before, but I seem to see birds quite differently now that I’m married to a birder!

My mom gave us a night/day stay on Galveston Island for Christmas, which was wonderful. We stayed in one of the hotels that is at about 85% functional since the hurricane. We were told that after the storm, only 1/2 of the building was even left standing. The devastation was awesome (and not the good sort). 4 months after the fact, it is obvious some lives will never be the same. Houses are gone (the stilts are there, but nothing else), some are just beat up, and there is evidence of Hurricane Ike everywhere you turn. They still don’t have all of the stoplights working on the island (the main part…not the outskirts), which seems like such a simple thing that isn’t when something this big happens.

Regardless, we had a great stay and enjoyed the beach in spurts. We enjoyed some really good seafood, some pretty good mexican, and surprisingly….no Sonic!  Here are some of my favorite moments from the day!

This is on the ferry ride over to Bolivar Penisula where we went bird watching!

The boy does love the beach!! He sometimes appears to be on a one man beach erosion undoing mission…He takes fistfuls of sand and throws them back to the ocean..it’s hilarious!

We found some small hills of sand on the beach. Zeb and Isaac figured out that they made great slides!

An OT moment in burying Isaac’s legs in the sand. He laughed a lot, but didn’t waste anytime in getting his legs up when Zeb let go!!

And yes, it is official. Isaac has been dipped in the Gulf of Mexico!  The waves were HUGE, so we didn’t let him play in the water at all. He has no fear and would have been swept to sea in a moment..

We had a great time in Houston with my mom and brother…Thanks to those who have been praying for my mom’s recovery. Her surgery went well. She had something called a UPPP with tonsillectomy. The UPPP has 26 letters, so please don’t ask me to spell it!  She stopped her pain medication on Saturday and is doing okay with just occasional advil and is off the anitbiotic since Saturday.  Her voice is slow to return, but that is to be expected. She is also sleeping better than she has in almost 20 years!  Please continue to pray that she remembers to rest and take it easy so that she will continue to heal quicker and better than the doctors told her she would!

Here are a couple of more pictures from her house…She got Isaac a whole bunch of play kitchen things, which he thoroughly enjoyed while we were there and will here after I unpack them all!  Uncle Ryan got him “Don’t Break the Ice”, which is a great turn taking game for Isaac both in the set up and the playing.However, his favorite toy, just might have been the clear bin that the toys were supposed to live in while we were there…when he found an empty laundry basket, that sufficed too!

We are in Houston with my mom and younger brother. My mom had surgery for severe obstructive apnea on Friday (Dec. 19th), so I flew in with Isaac on Sunday to tend to her when she was released from the hospital.  She is trying desperately to be a good patient, but needs some work! Please pray that her pain subsides and she is able to tolerate food better. She is on a diet of popsicles, yogurt, instant potatoes, pudding, and apple juice….We tried applesauce, but it gave her heart burn. She can also handle some soups, but they have to be cool, not hot!

In spite of all of that insanity, we have managed to have a little fun!  Here are some of the highlights so far…And yes, Zeb did make it into Houston safely this morning and is looking forward to a birding adventure on Galveston Island on Saturday (our Christmas present from mom!)…

This would be Isaac and Grangran playing in MoonSand. It is fabulous for therapy reasons and we are glad he will have some at home now! It is a sand that plays like playdoh in that it is moldable, but it doesn’t dry out and has the same texture as sand…Tis very cool! Isaac likes to play in it but doesn’t like the sticking to the hand (which is why this is good for him, therapywise)…

Uncle Ryan had 3 friends come over on Tuesday night. Isaac was trying to help decorate the gingerbread house with the twin girls, while the boys did computer stuff in the bedroom…He had a great time!!

The boys hanging out eating pizza!!  My brother, Ryan, is on the far left…

My dad, aka “Papa”, and Grandma Ginny sent Isaac a big Christmas package along with the few treasures we managed to conjure up.  Tanta Nita also sent a great puzzle….Here are some of the highlights!

“It’s an owl…whoo whoo…” Repeat until you’re nuts…This was definitely the favorite animal in the menagerie of animals from Papa and Grandma Ginny!!

Everytime we thought that that had to be the last animal, he found one more!   Thanks for them…He will be enjoying many hours of playing “zoo” and “farm” with these guys!

One of his presents from us is a DVD “Read and See” Bible. It has 40 or so Bible stories that they can watch on the TV while reading along in their book. We are looking forward to using this with Isaac and his new attempts at reading!
Tanta Nita, I didn’t get a picture up yet of your puzzle, but know that he already assembled the Zoo side and figured out all by himself that the other side makes a picture of a tiger. He is starting the process of reassembling it with the tiger side up! I’ll try and get a pic when we get home from Houston….

Merry Christmas!!

Well, we got about 4 inches of snow 2 days ago, and Isaac has been begging to play in it. The Mommy doesn’t really like to play in the snow and certainly can’t last as long as he can (our little heater can last for over an hour and not be cold!).  I had his IEP yesterday at the school, and since it was a Thursday and we’d have had lunch together anyway, Auntie Emily came over to hang with Isaac…She definitely tolerates the cold and enjoys playing in the snow more than I do, so she took him out to play!  They played outside for over an hour!!  I am glad he had fun..Maybe he can go out again today, we are getting a foot of snow today….by 4pm!  Craziness! He loves the snow and to be outside when it is cold..

Most of you will remember that we had ducks lay eggs on our second story balcony at the apartments, this last spring. Well, apparently when they decided to hatch, I decided to use my “traditional” camera to capture the moment. Needlesstosay, I found the roll of film while we were unpacking at the new house and just got it developed yesterday!  Here are some of the cute moments from “The Day the Ducks Left the Nest”.

Momma Duck was none to happy to share her moment with us, but she did let me get a little peek this day!  The ducks actually hatched over the course of about a week. They didn’t jump until the last one had hatched (or so we thought). The whole process took about a week or so.

Isaac was eating his breakfast on the porch, when he saw one of the baby ducks come out from under the Momma, which is what started this whole photo shoot!  An entire roll in two days time!

We had counted 6 eggs, and we had 6 baby ducks ready to jump just a few minutes after the last one hatched!  It was kind of scary watching them jump from such a height, but we had been reassured that this wasn’t the first time the Mommy Ducks had laid nests on the balconies and the ducks survived the jump everytime!

After they had jumped, I waited a few minutes and then scooted the dirt around to verify that they had all hatched and were all accounted for. Low and behold, there is one egg left to hatch! None of us can count to 7 apparently!  Isaac was the one that noticed the egg cracking, so we got the camera out in a hurry. Keep in mind, this is the next day, so the egg had been alone (as far as we can guess) since the siblings had jumped the day before. It was buried in the dirt with some down over it. We got a picture about 15 minutes after it hatched and was preparing for his final descent!

This is just a cute picture from the day’s events. We were talking about the ducks and where they were. We checked on them often in the pond. So far as we know, they all survived and made it to adulthood!

So all these posts are completely out of order, but I’m sure you’ll understand!

We put up the Pack N Play with a bassinet on the top about a week or so ago (Thanks, Mom!). We immediately asked him, “Who is this for?”. His answer, without missing a beat, was, “Bed for Baby Azariah (yes, he can pronounce it)…Baby Tanner…Baby Maria…Baby Landon…”  For those who don’t know, Baby Tanner is the grandbaby of Gramma Joyce, which Isaac played an integral part of his birth…Okay, he slept in the stroller or played with the kids at Sheila’s daycare, but still…He did see upon his exit from the OR!  Baby Maria is Ann and Wayne’s first grandbaby. She is beautiful and wonderful and Isaac has only seen her once and already adores her!  Baby Landon is an almost 1 year old at church, who is as big as Isaac, but still gets called a baby around here!  He is the youngest son of our new youth pastor and his wife! They have a 3 year old named Gavin, who is precious, too!

Anyway, back to the adorable story. So, this Tuesday, after the Pack N Play has been up for a little over a week, I hear this voice coming from the family room.. “Azariah, where are you?  Azariah, where are you?”  In his typical sing song fashion, I peek at the sound of the first one, He is peeking over the edge of bassinet looking for Baby Azariah, looks up at me, grins, runs at me full steam. He comes to a dead stop at my feet, lifts up my shirt, kisses my belly, and announces, “There you are, I found you!”.  It was so sweet!! I am definitely learning that you can’t catch every cute moment on film, but you can still wish you had!