Untrained thankfulness...

So we decided to kinda do our own facebook thankful thing within our own family.  So every night we each said something we are thankful for and why we are thankful for it.  Here are some of the more interesting ones that the kids have come up with.  I am very proud of all three of them for thinking beyond what we are trained to be thankful for.

The kids are

Aubry - 9 (almost 10 - I am reminded daily)

Isaac - 7 1/2

JJ - 3

JJ - Daddy - because he loves me  (Ok so that was a typical one, but I still loved it :))

Aubry - Soap - So we can be clean and not smelly

Isaac - Air - so we can breathe

JJ - Basketall Hoop - so I can play with Daddy (I might start getting a complex from this kid)

Aubry - Benedryl itch spray - for my fire ant bites

JJ - Peanut Butter sandwich - because it's so yummy!

Isaac - April Fools Day - Because I get to play jokes on you - then he said just kidding   - :LOL

Aubry - Water - to drink and use.

There were many more, but of course, I would forget to go to my computer every night to type them in. 

For the month of December we are focusing on what the real Christmas story is all about.  I do seem to notice more and more of there being less of Christmas in Christmas and more Holiday in Christmas, so since my kids will get less and less of it out and about then it is even more of Ben's and my job to make sure they "Get the Christmas"

Merry Christmas!!!

Remembering

Remembering

Our miracle 7 years ago...

I am a couple of days late, but will always hold in my heart the memories of the miracle God gave us 7 years this past week.  Our son Isaac was almost 5 months old and was in liver failure. 

We had him dedicated at Brookwood Church and the Pastor said a special prayer for him, which we didn't know he was going to do so I'm pretty sure I cried a bit up on stage.  Two days later Isaac was officially listed for transplant.  We had met with the transplant team and were expecting to wait for several months to a year, so we just went on with our lives like everything was normal.  Our pager wasn't working so we were told to keep our phones with us at all times.  Three days later I was having a lazy morning with Aubry (who was 2 at the time) and Isaac.  We were all in my bed watching cartoons and just hanging out.  The phone rang and Julie from transplant said they had a liver for Isaac.  I thought she was testing me to see if I would answer my phone - but she wasn't.  She said we needed to get up to Cincinnati right away.  I said ok, but inside I was panicking.  I called the pilot who had volunteered to fly us up there when we got the call but they said he was out flying and couldn't get back in time.  I panicked a bit more, but then I called my neighbor Angela.  She came over and just took over.  I think she called some other pilots, but nothing was working out.  In the meantime, Ben had called his brother Mike who called the airline he used a lot for business trips and got us a commercial flight, but it was leaving in an hour.  Since I had pretty much become not very useful, Angela packed my suitcase for me :)  Thanks Angela!!!

Ben got home from work pretty fast - I'm pretty sure he did not obey the speed limits!  Grabbed a couple of things and we rushed to the airport.  The airport staff was waiting for us at the airport and helped us get through check in and security very fast so we could make our flight.  We then get on the flight and the flight attendants already knew our situation.  When we arrived to Cincinnati airport there was a backup for landing and for getting to the gate due to some heavy fog they had had that morning.  The flight attendant announced that there was a delay, but that we would be moved to front of the line because they were transporting a baby who was on his way to the hospital for a transplant.  They were able to get us through to the front of the line for landing and then to a gate right away.  As we were getting off the plane - they let us get off first - the passengers on the plane kept telling us that they were going to pray for our little baby. 

We got to the hospital in under 4 hours.  Only by the grace of God was that able to happen with our pilot unavailable.  But thanks to Mike for helping us get on that flight.  We got a hospital room, and had to wait while the doctors flew up to Canada to get Isaac's liver.  He didn't actually go into surgery until about 10 that night.  That makes for a long day of not being able to feed our baby so he'd be ready for surgery, but so worth the wait.  Isaac was able to get a whole liver so that means it came from another baby so our hearts have always had a special place for our baby Angel.  Isaac had one of the shortest transplant surgeries that they had performed.  His old liver was in very bad shape but the new liver was perfect for him. 

I remember the strange feelings of sadness that someone else had to die for our son to live.  And the sadness for the family who was suffering.  While at the same time, I was excited for my baby to have a second chance at living.  Very strange emotions to deal with when dealing with a transplant. 

So this time of year, The memories and the emotions come rushing back.  I remember all year long, but this time of year will always be special to our family.  And I will always hold a special place in my heart for the family who made such a selfless decision. 

Thank - you so much to our family and friends and church for all the amazing support and prayers during that time.

Wrinkled Memories

As I was putting on my makeup today, I noticed something in the mirror...  My hands were wrinkled!  My first thought was oh no, they are getting old.  Then I thought, well they are just signs of what my hands have been through.  Then I thought these oh  not so deep thoughts about, what have my hands been through. 

My first thought was way back to when I was a little girl living in Longmont, Colorado.  We had this big tree in our front yard and remember how my brothers and I would climb up in that tree.  Then I quickly jumped over to my cousin Shanna's house.  Oh, that place was so much fun.  My Uncle Harold had so many things that we could play on.  I think maybe I remember a tree house or some place with a door and my hand knocking on that door.  I so wanted to get in, but my cousin Shanna (who I love a lot)  and my brother
(who I also love alot), I think it was Brad, were not being so nice to me.  They knew this song that I did not know, so I couldn't be in their club.  The song was "Sha na na na, Sha na na na, Hey Hey, Good-Bye".  They would sing it over and over taunting me while my hands were knocking on that door and tears were brimming in my eyes.  Maybe that is where my first wrinkle came from.... (btw - no hard feelings Brad and Shanna, just maybe when you guys have another "secret" song you could share it with me next time)

Then off my mind jumps to our next house in Illinois.  It was an older house with beautiful wood (I can only appreciate the wood now that I have the wrinkles on my hands).  The previous owners had painted many many layers of paint over the wood.  Since maybe my Mom and Dad already had some wrinkles and could appreciate the wood, they decided we would strip all the paint.  I remember being upstairs and painting on some stinky stuff that would make the paint bubble up and get soft, then taking a tool and scraping and scraping and scraping off that paint to finally reveal the beautiful wood door.  Maybe the wrinkle I got from that experience has helped me to appreciate the hidden beauty of experiences that God has thrown my way. 

Then off my mind jumps to highschool.  Have you ever been dining at a restraut  - lets just say a buffet where you have to use multiple plates.  Well, who washes those 5 dirty plates that you use.  Well, for a couple of years it was me.  My first job was at Ponderosa as a dishwasher.  I so longed to be a waitress, so I would work harder and harder thinking the managers would notice my hard work.  I was pretty fast at washing all those brown bins piled high with dishes, silverware, cups.  My hands could grab those plates, bang it against the garbage can to get off the excess food, the take the sprayer and rinse, put in the the diswasher rack and push it through faster than any other hands there.  After being a dishwasher girl for a long time, I finally got moved "up" to kitchen.  My hands didn't particularly like this job as I ended up with many burns from lifting heavy pans of baked potatos from the steaming hot ovens and frying fries and grease splattering up onto my hands.  I finally was able to use my hands to serve people.  I enjoyed being a waitress.  I think my hands may have even served my husband before I knew him.  His parents used to give him money to go out to eat on Sundays while at college and I remember serving this good looking guy that would come alone on Sundays.  Maybe, just maybe that was him, but apparently my stunning waitress oufit, my black pants with grease stains and my white button down shirt with more grease stains and that oh so cute green apron over top, was not enough to get his attention to ask me out there, I had to wait....And there is the story of yet another wrinkle and even a few burn scars.

On down the road, Ben and I were blessed with our second child.  And my hands were busy taking care of our newborn baby.  Our daughter Aubry (who was 2 at time) also used her hands to help.  I layed Isaac on my bed to get him ready for his first bath.  Aubry stayed on the bed to "watch" him as I went to test the water with my hands to see if it was lukewarm.  I ran a little bath for Isaac and got the towel and soap ready.  I went back into the bedroom to get him and Aubry's little hands had completely undressed him.  I have no idea how she got all those baby clothes off as some of them seem to need a rocket scientist to use.  Maybe - her first wrinkle - I don't know, only she will know.

As I look at my wrinkles I am reminded of the little things they have done every day.  And I pray and hope my hands will keep on doing those little things, because they will end up having so many great and wonderful wrinkle memories on them that will last forever.....

Back to Life, Back to Reality

I went on vacation with the fam last week to St. Joseph, MI.  Beautiful beaches!!!  We really had a great time and it was so nice to be our family of 5 again after being away from Ben so much this year.  Sometimes I think God puts things in our lives to make us appreciate what we have.  I guess it is easy to take for granted what we have.  This year God has helped me learn to appreciate being together as a family.  Something so simple, but so easy to take for granted.
So here are some pics from our vacation.  Just had a relaxing time - each day we just did whatever we felt like doing that day.  And usually we didn't even get  going til mid morning. (I guess cuz Ben let me do my favorite thing - sleeping in :)  When I got up each morning all the kids were fed and breakfast was already cleaned up - can't get any better than that!!!

JJ eating ice cream at Sherman's

boys watching the sunset

Aubry on the dock by the boat

Aubry riding the waves

Isaac making sand angels

my boys :)



Shopping for Service

I went to McDonald's today and ordered a large unsweet tea.  It's only $1 and pretty good.  I know, I know I should just make my own - as it is much cheaper.  But sometimes I just can't help it.  I love those Styrofoam cups.  Anyway I went through the drive through and got my tea.  As I was going down the road, I took a drink and it was terrible.  It wasn't even drinkable.  So as I got close to the camper I stopped by the McDonald's that I usually get my tea from and went in to see if they could just put some of their tea in my cup since this one was so bad.  It was about 2:30 in the afternoon so not very busy.  There were at least 10 people "working" up front.  One older couple was in front of me and the older lady ordered a Big Mac.  The worker said do you want a meal and the older lady said no she just wanted the sandwich and the senior drink.   Then I heard the worker say do you want a small, med or large and the lady said small.  Then while 9 people stood around and "worked", the older lady walked off with her big mac and drink cup and then this one lady yelled after her to come get her fries.  The old lady said I didn't order fries and the worker lady said yes you did it's on the screen.  The worker lady who hadn't even taken the order sat there and argued with the older lady.  Meanwhile, I was standing by the register waiting to be helped and there were the other 9 workers standing around talking .  The worker finally just threw out the fries, but didn't offer to give the lady her money back.  A few minutes later someone came over and said can I help you.  I told them the story of the bad tea and she said just a minute and the manager yelled from across from the room and said that they were a different franchise and had nothing to do with them.  Then she yelled at the worker to just give it to me, but then she ended up getting it herself.  I was very polite when she rudely handed me the tea and said most of the unsweet tea tastes bad.  I replied that I order almost every day from their drive through and the tea was always good here.  I did at that point get a little smile.  But did look down in my tea and notice she didn't put ice in it.

All this to say that service varies so much at different places.  If you go to a Chic-fil-A - you will always get quality service and anything you ask for they always say "My Pleasure" (Even the teenagers).  You go to McDonalds and you get people simply doing their job with no training and how to treat the customer.

On to the grocery store - My favorite is  Publix - extremely service oriented.  Very friendly and take the groceries out to the car and they seem to enjoy doing it.  Cookies  and balloons for the kids and coloring books if you ask.  I used to never shop here due to their prices being a bit higher, but now that I have started couponing (and yes, I use couponing as a verb)  I have learned that they can actually be cheaper than Wal-Mart.

So my summary is that McDonald's service is similar to Wal-Mart.  And the top customer service places are Chic-fil-A and Publix.

So I ask, Is it worth it to pay a little extra or go a little farther to go to a place that has great customer service?  Sometimes, yes, but I will still hit Wal-mart for a few things and will still get the $1 tea at McDonalds.  But most of the time I will choose Chic-fil-A (plus their food is much better) and I do most of my grocery shopping at Publix - with coupons of course. 

Cloudy with a Chance of Organizing

It's an overcast cloudy day and oh so muggy.  So while at the dentist with my kids (who were all cavity free - YAY)  I was trying to think of things to do today and I just couldn't get the idea of cleaning out JJ's room which has essentially become the toy room.  I had organized it about 6 months ago, but it is in pretty bad shape now.  If anyone has any tricks to get kids to put toys back the exact way they found them - I'm all ears. 

Anyway I went to Wal-Mart to buy some organizing supplies and hopefully make it easier for the kids to keep the room a bit neater.  Although this is probably wishful thinking. Someday my wish is to have a wall of built in shelves that hold those oh so cute canvas baskets.  Yes, Mike and Steph  - I am jealous of your toy wall. 

I went upstairs  took a quick survey...

This is actually how I found the room - pretty sad :(

Then I did the dump - I took all the toys and dumped them in a huge pile in the middle of the floor.

The Dump!!

Not more than two minutes after I finished the dump - I received a phone call from the Call Center asking for showing for our house.  I think my heart stopped for a minute and then I realized she asked for a showing tomorrow - PHEW!!!  But still had a huge job on my lap and the rest of the house to clean, mow the lawn and fix the kitchen light that I broke this morning. 

More of the Dump!!

Here is the finished product.  I only left out the toys that they seem to play with the most.  3 bags of garbage and 5 bags of toys to give away. 

Now named the toy corner - contains all the main toys the boys play with.

And the book and game shelf - decorated with stuffed animals - and yes we have already given at least 100 stuffed animals to Goodwill.

After I gave a demonstration of how to properly put a book on the shelf and how the cars only go in the car bucket and so on - I put the kids to bed!!!

Now off to clean the rest of the house for the showing...

Heaven is the Face...

So maybe a little deeper thought today....

I was driving in the car today and listening to the radio and the Stephen Curtis Chapman song came on called "Heaven is the Face".  Of course I cried as I listened to it, then a whole bunch of memories flooded my brain.  So if you saw me driving down Woodruff road bawling my eyes out, now you know why :) 

It brought me back to the day when Isaac was 10 months old.  He'd had his transplant 5 months earlier and everything had been going great.  We took him in to the hospital for some IV fluids late one evening and we finally got a room around 3am.  We were woken up by the nurse early that morning (I'm not even sure what time it was because it is all a blur).  She said Isaac was seizing and she didn't know how long he had been like that.  The whole left side of his body was non responsive.  They took him down for a Cat Scan, but had to stop several times because of the seizures.  The moved him to the PICU and his respiratory rate was low, but they weren't really doing anything except monitoring his seizures.  The doctor in charge was not calling his transplant team and communicating with them, so our home health nurse who had come in her jammies the night before to help us and was up at the hospital that morning called Cincinnati and told them what all was happening.



Isaac in Greenville, they kept the EEG on him to monitor the seizures he was having.


Cincinnati Children's hospital flew a jet plane down to get Isaac and we flew up that day.  Ben drove up as there was only room for 1 parent.  Isaac was placed in the PICU and intubated to help him breathe.  The next day he kept crashing and the doctors were pumping him full of every medicine they could think of, even some that were very risky and we had to weigh the options of using very high risk meds or risk not fighting whatever it was that was attacking his little body.  Of course we went with using the medicines.  They kept running all the tests they could think of and still couldn't find what was wrong.  In the meantime he was getting worse.  The evening of the first full day we were there, the doctors pulled us aside in a room with sofas and tissues and sat us down (this is the room you don't want to go to).  They pretty much told us they had tried everything they could think of but he just kept deteriorating.  They offered to call our family for us.  Most of our family were already on their way.  This was also when I noticed we were in a room with a window leading to the room next to us.  A long time ago, I had asked a nurse why would they have a window in some of the PICU rooms and she told me it was for when a child was close to dying, they would use it for the family members and they would open up the curtains so the family members would be close by.  Well, I noticed that the room next to us,  that our window led to, was empty. 



Isaac in Cincinnati the day he almost went to Heaven.

About an hour later, as Ben and I were in Isaac's room he was crashing again.  And let  me tell you it is nothing like TV.  There were doctors and nurses everywhere, but they were completely calm and worked together so well and quietly.  They had already called in the chaplain who was in the corner of the room praying.  Ben and I were standing at the end of the bed holding his feet.  I remember praying to God and saying "ok, if this is what you had planned for Isaac's life, I will accept it, but I would really love to keep him in our family and I wouldn't know how to tell his 3 year old sister if he died."  Then this strange, calming peace came over me and I just felt like whatever happened it would be ok.  I felt like God was right there in the room with us and was calming me.  It was a very strange feeling, but very peaceful.  Isaac pulled through the night and then the next day.  Then they put another patient in the room next to us (a good sign).  The doctors to this day still call it a miracle.

That strange, peaceful feeling that I had experienced was kind of embarrassing, I was actually feeling bad about feeling peace while Isaac was so sick and crashing.  But a couple of weeks later as we were having dinner (thanks to a friend who came to the hospital to stay with Isaac),  I decided to go ahead and tell Ben about it.  He was shocked when I told him, because he had had that same strange, peaceful feeling at the same time.  That was when I knew that God had put that calming, peaceful protection around us.

Isaac - today :)