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.

Friday Night Open Skate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ice skating!

 

 

 

 

Wisconsin Dells

We spent the last few days in the Wisconsin Dells (which really wasn't much colder than right here!) We stayed at a beatiful resort and spent most of our time in several indoor water parks. Here are a few pics from the trip.

I have this nifty one year Bible that I got as a gift when I was in high school. It has been signed in the front with the year that myself and a few of my family members have used it. I think that I made it throught it once or twice, of course I know that I missed days, even weeks, here and there. I was recently introduced to a web site that gives several plans for reading throught the Bible in a year. I checked it out, and I am planning to try to read through the Bible in 2009 chronologically. This is a bit different than reading straight through, or even a little bit of the Old Testement, New Testement, Proverbs and Psalms each day (this is the plan of my old Bible.) There is a link next to each day that provides a site that I can read the passage, in the version of my choice, off the internet. Thanks to Uncle John for giving me the link to the site..Click here if you want to check it out.

The "Best" Christmas Pageant EVER!

I have the recommend this book that is located on my bookshelf (at home, and on the blog..see the list to the left). I have been reading a chapter a night to the kids, and on Thursday night we were down to two chapters. The kids were going to stay over at my parents house on Thursday night, and then be gone with their dad all weekend, so I took the book with me to my parents' house on Thursday. It was my grandma's birthday, so we were having dinner. Late in the evening, my mom, sister, grandma and the girls and I were sitting in the kitchen and I offered to read the end of the book. My sister became positively giddy at the idea, stating that she loved that book. Amazingly my mother had never heard of it. I clearly remember one of my grade school teachers reading it out loud when I was a kid. So I read the last two chapter out loud. Now, I read aloud to the kids alot, but rarely to a group like that, so it was kinda strange, and I kept cracking up, because the book is hilarious, while I was reading. I had forgotten how touching the last chapter was, and how the chld that was narrating the book learned so much about the true meaning of Christmas. I would recommend picking up this book and reading it aloud to your family!

Go Tell it on the Mountain....

 

last night was the Children's Christmas Program at the church. Calvary has a wonderful childrens department, with lots of kids there every Sunday and Wednesday. This fall, they have been working on memorizing the Biblical account of the Christmas story from Luke, as well as learning songs to sing. Paige and Peyton were down front in the middle, so very easy access for pictures! One either side of them are Steven and Lydia McCurdy. But the little guy on the other side of Lydia stole the show! That wasn't his actual spot to be standing, he should have been farther over with the other primary kids, but he was all over the stage! He danced around and even made a big bow to the crowd, all the while, trying to get the attention of his dad..believe me he had his dads attention (and everyone elses!)

Boys love...firetrucks!