trip to Arizona

In November we took a trip to Arizona. Greg had to work til the day before thanksgiving so I took my cousins daughter, Sarah to help me with the trip. I am having trouble getting pictures loaded but here are a few of the trip. Holliday traveled well in the horse trailer and spent some time with the vet in Arizona getting dental work done in addition to having some cancer spots removed and having a lameness exam to assess his lameness that has bothered him (or me) off and on over the last few years.

Here Kayla is pretending to be a queen early one morning on our 3 day trip. I think this was taken before daylight.

Eric had lots of fun with all his second cousins and relatifves thanksgiving day

Of course Grace was with us and earned a reputation for having a long active tongue

As you can see Eric had lots and lots of fun the whole time. This was taken at Grandad and Grandmas house.

2 cowgirls and a little horse

An update at last! These pictures are from the fall festival at our church on halloween night. Kayla as a cowgirl but if you asked her she'd say "I'm not cowgirl, I Kayla!"

Daddy is running the golfing booth and Kayla had fun "golfing with daddy" Mommy with her little cowgirl and horse.

Eric made a great little horse. He was fine with his costume all night and never tried to take it off like Kayla did when she wore the same costume two years ago. Eric just laughed and smiled all night but he was getting heavy and hard to hold by the end.

fun fall stuff

Kayla adores her cousin, Michael. Here they are watching a movie together.

Alyssa is riding her new friend, Holliday. She's doing a great job.

Eric thinks its lots of fun now that his cousins live close by. Sarah spends as much time as possible at our place.

As always Eric loves to ride.

Kayla started gymnastics. Her tumbling and jumping class has been great fun for her.

I have been trying to update this blog for a week or more but for some reason I keep having technical difficulties. Hopefully this works.

Updates:

Eric got the results from the upper GI and flex sig etc. tests that were done in July. Nothing much showed up but they think he has food allergies. We saw another GI Dr. last week and the reccomendation was to keep him on a restricted diet until he is two and see a pediatric allergist. They also did some more tests but we haven't gotten results. On a strict diet he is doing well. He has really grown up this past few months. Today at playgroup he climbed into the chair at the table and completed a craft just like the big kids.

I sprained my ankle and have been wearing a brace and going to Physical therapy for about a month. I also had to have some emergency dental work done and will continue going to the dentist for a couple months (not fun).

My cousin, Beth and her family moved here in August and they are living in our old house. Its great to have them here.

Greg has had long hours at work lately and it seems like we have hardly seen each other but I guess it has helped us pay for emergency vehicle repairs that have come up.

We hope you are doing well and will try to update more frequently.

August 4th 2009, Kayla turns 3

We had a small party with just Kayla, Eric, Mommy and Daddy this evening. Kayla had a lot of fun and enjoyed many phone calls for her birthday too. She was very excited about the cards she got in the mail and talked about cake and icecream all day. We let her open her gifts very last thing before bed. Eric stayed entertained with his new boots, socks and toothbrush : ). Grace stayed entertained with the excitement!

Kayla likes her new dollhouse.

Eric's procedures went well

Eric endured an upper GI endoscopy and flexible sigmoidoscopy with biopsies of the small and large intestine. The GI Dr. that performed the surgery felt that things looked good from the scope but as he expected he didn't see anything conclusive and we won't know much until the results of the biopsies come back in about 2 weeks. Eric is resting today and has been a great sport through it all. We are very tired since we got up at 3:30 am and left at 4am but we appreciate all your prayers for Eric today. We'll update when we know more.

Eric's procedures schedule for tomorrow morning

For those who don't know Eric is scheduled to have 2 procedures done early tomorrow morning. The procedures are under heavy sedation and are an upper GI and a Lower GI and biopsies of the small and large intestine as well as some bloodwork etc. in order to run tests in search of Erics protein intolerance problem.

Eric does not tolerate protein in any form we have tried except breastmilk. My milk dried up completely a few months ago but Eric has continued on donor breastmilk from the milkbank and was doing great until we started introducing more solids. Once we figured out he was not tolerating protein foods the Dr.s had us try different milk proteins in order to keep him on some sort of protein once he is off the donor milk which should have been at 1yr (in June). So for the past 4 months we have been trying one formula after another including soy based formula's, hypoallergenic formulas with broken down proteins, goats milk etc. etc. etc. Nothing has worked and now we are still on donor milk at 4.25per ounce and he is semitolerating Neocate which is an elemental medical food often used for tubefeeding. Eric is doing great developementally and in every other way. Please pray that his procedure goes well and that the GI Dr. will be able to help us figure out what his problem with digestion is. And pray that we will be more informed to understand the whole picture of his allergies to other things as well.

Its been a busy month so I'll show you a few of the things we have been doing besides vacation bible school which took 2 full weeks with decorating and preparing etc.
We had a small family party for Eric with just Greg and I and Kayla and Eric on his birthday then later we had a party with the Johnson family with us. Even Grandma Johnson wore a party hat LoL. The kids are loving the pool this summer and we're using lots of sunblock and still fighting sunburn. Scout spent a couple weeks with us and what a great help she was. We had lots of fun with her. I'm including a picture of her and I riding as well as more pics of us horseback : )

Eric is 1 year old! Yay!

Eric is one today and wants to show off what he can do. He says he can get in and out of this bucket all by himself.

See I told you I could get in the bucket : ) Now watch me get out of the bucket!

Look I did it! I got out and I'm soooooooo proud of myself.

1st Birthday June 4th 2009!

I can't believe Eric is a year old already. He is now walking and climbing quite well. He says bye bye (bah bah) and waves the cutest wave I have ever seen, he plays peek a boo and says (pie pie) while covering his ears instead of his eyes. He loves to bring me things so he can hear me say "Thankyou". One of his recent "fun" activities was to climb in and out of a horse feed pan so I'll post those pics for now and more after we celebrate his birthday. We plan to have a party for him on June 13th since this week we have way too much other stuff going on with VBS etc. (Well, after spending the last half hour trying pics will have to wait because they just won't load for some reason)

Trip to see Katie

This past weekend was indescribable! There is nothing that can compare to the emotions I felt as I reunited with Katie after 19 years! 19 years ago I turned Katie over to God and he allowed me to be involved in the choosing of her adoptive parents. This weekend I got to spend 4 days getting to know Katie and her family. Her parents, Brian and Diane are as wonderful as I could ever have hoped for. Her sister Whitney has a place deep in my heart. God has truly blessed me but more than that God has blessed Katie and I am so pleased to see how he has worked in her life. We arrived in Baltimore friday evening and left monday evening. We spent every minute possible with Katie and her family. Kayla and Eric adore Katie and it appears the feeling is mutual : ). Here are a few pics from our trip. I'd love to share more but for now I'm exhausted and must get some sleep.

Before and after

We endured a storm last night. Here you can see some of the damage.

Its hard to believe there used to be a building right here!

Oh there is the building that belonged at the spot of the last picture its in a pile on top of our new horse shelter! Agghhh

This is what the horse shelter looked like before yesterday. We had planned to put the roof on it this weekend.

Here you see a picture of the "Holliday Inn" in the spot we intended for it to be.

What a mess. If you look back on our blog you can see that the last couple months have been focused on getting buildings for shelter put up. All the work we did and money we spent having buildings moved and assembled is gone.

The good news is that we are all ok. We'll need some repairs to our truck, our back porch, new buildings and a lot of fencing to get back to square one. I guess the bright side is that we got rain for our pasture!

These pictures were taken after it all calmed down. You couldn't see to the front steps during the storm.