35...is the new 25...

 

Happy birthday Charity! Sorry we can't get together to properly celebrate your birthday. Instead, I thought I would dig out an old picture of us and post it here. This picture was taken April 1990. That means that we were 16 and 15 years old..and we thought that we were sooo old..and that life was sooo hard! If only life was that hard now! Love you, friend..

Then and now...

 

 

 

 

The last two days have been my typical February walk down memory lane. Today, my babies turned 9 years old..correction, not until 11:09 and 11:10 tonight! We had a terrific day, I will blog some more pictures of the day later. We went on a field trip with Aunt Brittany and Lauren and Brookelyn and enjoyed a girl's lunch out. No newborn pics blogged today, but I do have a few of them after coming home from the hospital. They were about 4 months old in the sleeping picture, 5 months old in the July 4th colors. I can't express how much these two girls are a gift from God. The girls are now on the home stretch finishing up third grade. We have homeschooled, learning together, for almost 4 years now. I think that I have learned as much as they have! Having them home, and being their "teacher" has been an extremely rewarding job. So, Happy Birthday Paige and Peyton!

click here for my 2006 post telling of the birth.

Happy Birthday Mr. Lincoln!

 

 

We were in Springfield visiting James's grandmother over the celebration of President Lincoln's 200th birthday. The girls and I headed downtown to hear a word from the (former) president. (I say former because our current president also made an appearance in the state capitol yesterday) A church next door to the Lincoln home was opened up to hear the speaker. "Mr. Lincoln" read to the kids, impressed upon them (and their teachers and parents) how important it was for them to read and be read to. He told stories of his youth and also a few from the Bible. It was encouraging that in this setting, full of grade school students, that God's name was freely mentioned. Then came Hariett Tubman, who was portrayed quite interestingly by a woman who commanded attention. She told of her slave beginnings, and how she helped her fellow slaves and her family escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad. This speaker gave this one word as the most important thing "Freedom." I tend to agree, though I doubt in the way she meant it. As I sat there, I thought about how true it was, freedom is the most important thing, Freedom from the slavery of sin. My girls have been watching a video that tells the story of Pilgrims Progress, and for the first segment, they kept asking what Christian's "burden" was. They soon realized that the burden was sin. Christian was only able to lay down his burden when he gave it to the cross. In fact, this story had his burden literally fall of and roll into the tomb. In the same way, we can remember what Harriett Tubman had to say about the importance of Freedom, and how the most important freedom we have is the freedom we receive when our burden falls off at the cross.

Spitz Nevus..and other big words!

Before the surgery in preop holding.

Paige and Jamie after the surgery, it only too about 15 minutes for the whole thing to be over! She was a little "freaked" when she woke up. She kept crying and saying "I am so confused" and "I don't know what happened." Poor baby, didn't like falling asleep to anesthesia.

We didn't stay at the hospital very long, so Paige was still VERY unsteady when we headed home! She came down to the car in the cute little wheelchair. She woke up soon after we got home and ate THREE cups of soup!

This all happened last Thursday..now for the latest on the mole. We were totally expecting this to be a common, congenital mole. This type is harmless, but needs to come off prior to adolescence, because it can become cancerous later. However, it the pathology report on the mole wasn't quite so simple. I have pasted an email that I sent out yesterday here:
Dr Savage called today to give me the pathology report on Paige’s mole. He spoke to the pathologist in Danville, as well as one in Champaign, who both agree that the mole is “probably” benign. The pathologist feel that the mole is most likely an “atypical melanocytic proliferation.” The problem with this diagnosis, is that it greatly resembles a melanoma, even though it is not even considered precancerous. Due to this difficulty to distinguish, the pathologist is sending the mole to a lab in New York for another opinion. We won’t hear their conclusions for several weeks. Dr. Savage spoke to both pathologists directly, and asked several questions, leading me to believe that he didn’t see this kind of thing too often, but I am not certain of that, I didn’t think to ask. I have googled these words for any information, and I did find some sites that were helpful in understanding the problem, but not particularly encouraging that we will get an absolute negative path report.

Words I googled:

Spitzoid nevus

Atypical melanocytic proliferation

The site that was most helpful:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15503312

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1059623-overview

I will pray that we will be able to get a definite 100% benign report from New York.
Sandy

February so far..

Well, so far February has been pretty eventful around here. I am not seeing too much of my husband this month. He started his new job as a Firefighter/Paramedic at Bloomington Fire Dept. The first two weeks were Mon-Fri days, which wouldn't be too bad if it wasn't for the 1 1/2 hour each way commute! With all the evening activities going on right now, we are passing each other coming and going.