As I start to write an update of 2009, I think of all the trauma’s and challenges we’ve faced this year and think…”wow, what a difficult year we’ve had”… yet, what a blessed and glorious year as well.  It’s hard to be down on ‘09 when we have been so blessed. 

When times are good,
be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as
well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his
future… Ecclesiastes 7:14

Considering we had both of our girls visit Dornbecker Hospital at OHSU, Vienna for surgery and Ziva for a very scary virus incident, lost a baby, had bad news about family health, friends deaths, changes and challenges with income and ministry it would be easy to say that 2009 has been the most burdensome year for Sam and I since we married.  Certainly, if we focused on all those things, we would look back at 2009 and say “what a horrible year.”  But I can’t bring myself to do that.  Sure, I wish we never would have gone through the struggles we did, oh that life were easy all the time, but even amidst those challenges we consider ourselves blessed!

Sam remains the best husband in the whole world, and the love of my life! 



He’s done a fabulous job of working hard at siteCoffee and building PixelCliff, I’m so proud of him!  He’s been getting more involved with the men’s ministry at our church by joining David’s Men and the Men’s Ministry Team.  It’s been great for him to feel like he’s starting back in ministry again, but it’s a far cry from being in ministry full tim for him or being in leadership… but one step at a time!  Vienna’s doctor asked for EKG’s from all of our family and when Sam had his done they confirmed that he indeed still has the hole in his heart that he was born with.  We’re still in process for followign through with testing with a specialist with him, but it’s not something that we are terribly concerned with at this time. But apparently he hasn’t fully filled it with Jesus yet (LOL ha ha ha… bad joke, but I just had to!)

Our girls are growing up so fast and are getting so smart and are the greatest joy in our lives!  We’ve had some special times livign with my parents and sharing our girls with them, what a blessing to see them get close to them.





Vienna started her year with follow ups for her surgery to correct her bladder reflux issue.  I’m happy to report she’s had not ONE Urinary Tract Infection since the surgery!  On the 5th we’ll return to Dornbeckers for her next follow up exam which I believe if all is well will be her last! Wahoo!  Her cardiologist did explain about her prolonged QT interval and we will have another appointment in March to check in on that situation, but over all it seems that watching what medications she takes is all we hav to worry about there… She’s such a precousious three and a  half year o 
ld!  She’s already started to recognize words and sound out letters. She’s not completely interested in learning to read, so getting her to do it is a challenge, but she can sit down and sound out words and recognizes words like Pool and Cake! LOL  Every day she amazes me with what she knows and with her love for people. A favorite memory this year was at her first time seeing the Nutcracker.  She was sooo concerned for the Mouse King who  “got hurt and his friends dragged him off to the hospital” that throughout the rest of the performance she kept asking me “Is the Mouse King feeling better yet??”.  Then, durring the arabian dance, the dancers came out with girls in belly shirts and the man shirtless.. my little gem stood right up, pointed accusingly at the stage, stomped her foot and shouted “INAPPROPRIATE!”  THAT’S MY GIRL!!!! I was so proud (thankfully it was a performance for homeschool childern so it wasn’t so mortifying having her 
shout out in the middle of everything!) She’s currently learning to ride her scooter and sings all the day long. So fun.  She also got to ride on a float in the 4th of July parade. oohh that was sooo exciting and great fun for her…. it was sooo hot that day! Ziva and I enjoyed watching for her
 



 
 


Ziva, wow, she’s learned to run from one end of the house to the other, she’s quick. Turn your back for a moment and she’s climbed onto the counter and started cooking for you, or has gathered up all the coasters in the house and is distributing them into every room.  She’s cutting the last of her teeth (I’ll be sooo glad when that’s over) and my little mountain goat is starting to try to climb out of her crib (she’s already mastered the Pack and Play! There’s no containing her) She has a giggle to melt any heart and the best smile ever.  She had so many firsts including her first Ambulance ride and stay at Dornbecker Children’s Hospital.  Another first was that she and I were flown to Colorado to see my good friend Jen. We had a blast and Ziva flew VERY well and stole EVERY attendant’s heart!!

 




Thankfully it was nothing more than a virus that was attacking her bone marrow (the dr’s did do some testing to rule out Leukimia, which was scary).  She’s finally starting to actually talk (she doesn’t need to most of the time, with 4 adults in the house to cater to her, and her sister who…well, doesn’t leave much quiet space).  It’s so fun.  She said her first “sentance” the other day at the dinner table when I was trying to get her to take a bite “NO WAY!” ahh… just like her sister taught her! ***rolling my eyes*** But she never misses a chance to raise her hands for “Hallelujah!” after our prayer’s “Amen!”

I did start to be a part of our churches Radiant girls ministry which has been fun… we had a big dessert night for the girls in December which I had a blast helping decorate for.  The biggest change for me this year was that I started a new hobby. Cake making!  It’s been great fun and I’m thinking that Esther needs to move home from Ukraine and open a bakery with me She’s been enjoying making and decorating cakes too.  Hummm… I meant to upload a picture of one of my cakes, but it doesn’t seem I did (and I can’t add any more this month cause I added too many already) but they are all on my Facebook account if anyone wants to check them out

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Technology drives me NUTS!  Things were set up just fine for me to blog, then it’s one thing after another… thankfully I have Sam that can fix things for me, but we’ve had such crazy lives of late that he’s not had a chance.  So, hopefully soon Sam can fix this thing and make my picture uploads work so that I can blog and put pics in   Here’s hoping!!  As for our long silence, well, hopefully sometime soon I’ll do some updates! 
Until then, family if you have added me as a friend on Flickr, I’ve added a bunch of pictures to it to bring us up to Halloween
Enjoy

Dear Grandma Bible… today Vienna wanted to share her singing with you… Here’s the first song… “Angels Watching Over Me” … she sings this one a lot!!

Here’s actually the fist attempt. She wanted to sing you “Angels Watching”… because she sings it all the time… but when it came time to sing… well… she had a new song on her mind… lets see if you recognize it

Incase you didn’t recognize it… that was “Step In Time” from Marry Poppins!

And then she decided to sing one more… but she got a little distracted for a bit there! She is my daughter after all!

The camera shut off just a half a second too fast!! What she’s saying in the end there is that she wants to go to McDonnalds! She’s a little obsessed with “chicken patio’s and fries” LOL (that’s Chicken nuggets and french fries) oh yeah, with milk! We used to cut up breaded chicken patties for her, so she calls nuggets chicken patio’s LOL it’s so funny. She recognizes McD’s and Burger King wherever we go! She even asked her daddy to make more money so she could have more McD’s! I swear we haven’t gone there THAT often!! (but we usually stop there when we go to the dr’s office for the girls, and we have been doing that a bit more often of late… hopefully that will stop soon!)

So there you go! Enjoy Grandma Bible! (Auntie Es and Pris and Sarah too, cause I know you’ll love watching as well!

Much love to you all…. we sure do miss you!

We’ve all been sick in this house.  Some sort of virus/bug got to all of us. Upset tummies, and gastro intestinal tracts, slight fevers.  Vienna recovered rather quickly, Sam did too… the rest of us battled a little bit (my mom and I still have headaches and don’t quiet feel well). But Ziva… well, something hit her hard.

One Thursday night, Sam and I actually got to go out on a date with some friends of ours.  Ziva’d had a bit of a fever, but nothing over 100, so it could easily be explained by that nasty process called teething.  My mother called about half way through dinner… her fever had gone up to 103.  Mimi gave her some baby Tylenol and they were able to get her down to sleep.  By the time we got home that night she’d returned to just around 100.  Friday, she was fine, under 100 and chipper so I didn’t take her into the doctor figuring she was on the mend.  Saturday her fever was up again… Sunday night it dropped to 94.7! She was cold, clammy and it was scary.  She was asleep when it dropped so it was difficult to decide if she was acting abnormally or not.  We called a family friend who is a doctor, woke the poor guy and his wife, also a dr in her residency, up.  He calmed us down a bit and because she’d been awake enough to seem to be acting normally.  Still nervous though Sam slept holding her all night long (poor guy).
So we took her in to the dr on Monday just to see what was up.  Her temp was back to just under 100, but no UTI, no ear infection, her lungs sounded clear… everything seemed normal.  We asked the dr what to do if she dropped that low again (unlike our family friend, this dr just seemed to think I was taking her temp wrong, or hadn’t bundled her or something like that) he told us to take her to the ER…. Monday night, sure enough… 94.7, cold and clammy. So at 10:30 at night we packed her up and headed to Silverton Hospital Emergency Room.  And so began the nightmare!!!!

Once in the ER they immediately put Ziva under a heat lamp.  Sam was holding her under, sitting on the bed, under the lamp.  Then they came in to take her blood! UUHHGG… it was horrible! She was a bit dehydrated, and so when three nurses were holding her down and trying to get the needle into her vein but couldn’t because it was rolling and couldn’t get it in… I wanted to die! The look of terror in Ziva’s eyes was horrible!! and I was standing at her head trying to calm her and she’s looking at me like “what are you letting them do to me!” I was ready to go home right then.  They added a warmed IV to try to help get her temp up… it still didn’t go up much.

At about 2pm after blood work, IV, heat lamp while being held, and chest x-ray the ER dr came back in and said she looked fine, but he was consulting with OHSU/Dornbecker Children’s hospital, an hour north, and it was likely they would want her admitted. He was very ho hum about the whole thing, he said he wouldn’t admit her but just send her home and just keep her warm but we’d see.  Dornbecker’s did say she should be admitted since she wasn’t warming up and her blood count was low… and since babies can turn so fast, we’d have to go by ambulance!  At least they didn’t feel like we had to have the PANDA (Special pediatric ambulance) transport her.  At this point with the ER dr’s attitude we felt fine, like this was just an extra precaution and all…  Sam drove home to pick up a few things and I went with Ziva in the ambulance.   It only took us 45 minutes   it was nice.  The drivers Steve and Chris were both really nice guys and were even smiles at that time in the morning.  That helped too.

About 4 a.m. we reached Dornbecker’s and got Ziva into her room.  Sam arrived about a half hour later (the doors were all locked for the night and one of the nurses ran down to let him in! so nice there).  They continued to give her warming blankets (I held her on my chest the rest of the night) and check her vitals, but she was still low (they kept thinking their equipment was malfunctioning because she kept dropping to 94.3 and never got over 95.8, if memory serves, that night)

The next morning the “troop” came through.  Since it is a teaching hospital there is a group of dr’s that do the rounds in the morning complete with residents and interns and dr’s and fellows and… like 6 people.  They were all very nice and all so concerned it seemed which surprised me.  But they still couldn’t figure out what would cause her temp to go so low. So, figuring it was most likely a virus they put us on a sort of quarantine.  Any medical staff that came in had to put aprons on (mostly to prevent other patients getting the virus if that wound up what was going on).  They did a bunch of tests for virus’ and said that the “blood people” are going to come in to talk to us about further testing they would like to do and that we’d likely spend another night. Here’s where things got interesting.

About 4pm the doctor comes in and introduces herself “hi, I’m so and so from oncology.” ONCOLOGY!?!?!? I thought this was just “blood people!” She starts explaining that Ziva’s marrow doesn’t seem to be doing what it should and her counts are all off  and they would like to do a bone biopsy to investigate further. I immediately freak out about leukemia as this is what my grandmother died of (it was a rare case…. she got some form that usually children get, and she died quickly).  The most dreadful night of our lives ensued!

Our friend Jenny is a Resident there at the hospital, so that night she came by and brought us pizza (Papa Johns, my favorite!) it was just what I needed to lift the spirits! She assured us that the were just being careful and that teaching hospitals “like to do tests.” But still, as a parent, when something like that is on the table, you want it off as soon as possible!!  (It was about this time that I realized that I was loosing the baby too, so it was doubly difficult).

Ziva’s test wasn’t until 12:30 the next day… needless to say it was a LONG morning. My parents an Vienna came back up for a second visit.  About one in the afternoon they took us off quarantine but no one talked to us as to why… As my dad always says “the absence of information leads to the worst case scenario!” That’s how it felt… it was awful waiting… Ziva’s main doctor came in to chat with us just before six that night, she was trying to wrap up and go home, but she stayed and talked with us for a while and was there when the Oncology dr’s came back in about seven that night!! All was well!!!  We were able to go home!!

Almost three weeks later all seems well. Ziva’s blood test came back and her counts are back up to normal.  She’s running around the house like crazy and smiling again (boy did I  miss her smile!!)  She’s still teething though, so we’re still a bit cranky, but she’s sleeping through the night again and her temps have been back in the normal range so PTL all turned out well!!!  PTL we have medical coverage for her and Vienna!  I’m still exhausted most of the time, but I am getting back to normal.

Hopefully this email is understandable… its taken me three days to write it with all the interruptions I’ve been getting   But that’s the jist of it all!

Sadly the Lord had plans for our baby that did not include him or her coming into this world safely.  We had complications early on, but were able to see a strong heart beat. Usually this means there’s 10% or less chance of miscarrying.  But, someone has to be in that 10% and this time it was ours. Its so hard to understand why these things happen… until you remember that this world is not perfect, and this world is just a temporary home. 

We live in a fallen world, which means, we live with imperfect bodies, and imperfect health. It does not mean however that our Lord does not love us or does not care for us or that He is not in control.  As sad as it is for us, who, in 9 short weeks, grew so very excited to meet our little one, we know that baby is now made perfect and has joined the Lord in heaven.  Life is full of loss, and life is full of tragedy. But through it all we hold fast to the truth that the Lord in heaven is in control. That when we have a relationship with him, we know where we are going.  We take heart in knowing that someday we’ll walk the streets in heaven and we’ll meet the little ones we never got to hold here on earth. (And hold tighter to the ones we do get to hold here!)