Praise to the Lord {An Update on Emery}

i have GREAT news.

baby Emery is home!!! thanks to all who read and prayed for this sweet girl and her family.

she was getting stronger last week and able to eat on her own a few times on wednesday. this was a huge mile stone. her feeding tube was taken out and she was able to both nurse a little and supplement with a bottle!

she's been improving more and more with her physical therapy and her body is starting to get back on track.

all that combined with her gaining/retaining weight, gave the doctors the confidence to give their family the green light to go home on saturday.

going home is hard work. don't you just want to nibble on those cheeks!!!

there will still be a long road ahead for Dave & Sarah as they continue to work with her and her physical therapy, but thankfully the doctors used amazing God-given judgement and she was only in the hospital 16 days.

please continue to pray for their family as they ease back into regular life with their little girl at home.

our "maycation"

our family took two vacations this month.

which is something we don't normally do so that made it extra fun.

our first was the hubster & i's trip to Jamaica. amazing doesn't even being to describe how wonderful it was.

first there was the view. it was breath taking. this is the view from our balcony. and that is our pool. there were three pools in all.

each sunset was gorgeous!!

we got totally spoiled every meal being able to eat "out" if you will.

and bonus... no kid throwing food or tantrums!

but mostly we did this:

and this:

it was so good for our relationship. we hadn't been away together in over 4 years, so this was long overdue.

the second trip was a family wedding down in san diego this last weekend.

aren't they adorable! it's my cousin Molly (who was my maid of honor) and her wonderful new husband Nathan.

we did a little touristy type stuff... sea life aquarium, down town, etc...

but primarily we were here for the wedding.

isn't he just the cutest! i might decide to dress him in a shirt and tie more often. ya know. like to go to target and stuff.

i took this picture between the heads of my aunt & uncle, the parents of the bride.

loved looking at them from their perspective.

and no. he didn't walk down the isle like a good little ring bearer. but hey, he's two. should've known.

notice the tears of sadness. rediculous.

ask my kid to say "cheese", and this is what you get. :)

aren't we cute. me & my man plus the bride & groom.

and then there's this one...this is the real us.

love them. i say that alot, but man do i love them.

family photo attempt. denied.

my kid likes to dance. actually that is an understatement. my kid was obsessed with the dancing.

it seemed though that he really just wanted to dance with the girls and then lead them off the dance floor behind some tree. really made the hubby and i nervous for the future. we're going to have to address that someday.

all in all, despite the hotel fiasco (see here if you don't know what i'm talking about) and realizing we never want to take a toddler to a wedding again. (oh wait. we get to do that in August. never mind.) we did have a great time.

family time is so important and no matter how it's done it needs to happen. so go out there and enjoy some family time!!

A big fat F

you know how grades meant everything when you're a kid. well maybe you weren't one of those people? i was.

to me, grades were crutial. it was a reflection of me as a person. and the better the grade the more my parents paid rewarded me.

as an adult i frequently give my self a grade for the day. just for kicks usually. for example: the other day i was a great mom. i didn't lose my temper. we did crafts. i made a lunch that didn't involve processed cheeses & noodles. all in all an A+ day as a mommy.

today was another story.

i get a big fat F. F for failure. epic fail today. epic.

let me explain. no that will take too long. let me sum up. (movie anyone?)

our bags were all packed, we were loaded in the car and heading to san diego for a wedding this weekend. we decided to take a quick stop at disneyland to cut the travel time in half.

now let me preface this with, i had booked our hotel on priceline two weeks ago. they have some lovely non-gracious policies that we had already had problems with. it ended up being much more expensive that we could have afforded, but non the less we were going and going to make the best of it.

after playing in DCA we started to head on down to our hotel. i decided to call the hotel and confirm our reservation and request a king size bed. thank the lord i did. because the very sweet man on the other end of the phone regretted to inform me that my reservation was for the previous weekend.

didn't catch that? THE PREVIOUS WEEKEND!

who does that? apparently i do.

so, we have no hotel. we've driven over half way. i'm balling like an idiot. and i'm sure my husband wants to kick me out of the car. i wouldn't have blamed him.

we drove home.

and promptly booked another hotel for tomorrow. so, a weekend that was a little too expensive for us has now become extremely too expensive for us. were this not my cousin and dear friend's wedding and were my son not the ring bearer, i would have thrown in the towel.

i'm sure i'm supposed to say something about how, i'll grow from this. or that everyone makes mistakes, or some sort of blah blah blah. but i'll be honest. i felt as small as an ant. and i still feel that way.

i'm not looking for sympathy, or kind words (dad), or anything like that. just venting. and sharing a story. hope your weekend started and finishes better than mine did.

a sweet girl

isn't that one of the cutest little girls you've ever seen?! her name is Emery.

these are her wonderful parents. her beautiful mama has been a friend of mine since childhood (her sister married my uncle, so in some odd way we are related). her great husband is a good friend of my husband and my families (my mom actually set them up.). they are amazing God-honoring people and we are so blessed to have them in our lives.

the reason for bringing them up is that their sweet girl wasn't feeling so well last week, and like the good mama she is, Sarah, started to notice a few things were off with her usually spunky little girl (see photo below).

she'd had a fever for a few days, was a little constipated (nothing unusual about that with babies), and was a little lethargic. all of that would have been passed off as teething, or just recovering from a cold, except that Emery started to struggle to hold her head up on her own all the sudden. for an almost 6 month old, that is a giant red flag! Sarah & Dave took her right to the pediatrician who recommended they see a neurologist.

as a mama, you never want to hear specialists recommended at the doctors. never. that night i prayed. a lot. please lord, don't let it be what we all fear. cancer.

the neurologist had good news and scary news. it wasn't cancer. praise the lord. it wasn't early onset m.s. praise the lord.

but. it was infant botulism. praise the lord.

i know that sounds funny. but slo county (where they live) has the highest rates of childhood/infant botulism in the nation, so they are very very well equipped to handle a case in their hospital. infant botulism is treatable. infant botulism has a cure.

so this sweet little girl was admitted last thursday to the hospital immediately for fear that she would stop breathing. the recovery time takes weeks, even months.

patience will be needed. praise is due to the Lord our God. prayers are being lifted up as we speak.

according to her mama (who doesn't have a blog but should), she's doing better. her muscle tone is coming back, but it will take months of both occupational and physical therapy to get her back to where she was. she cannot eat (nurse) yet, so they are using a feeding tube, and she just got taken off some of the monitors. they say she's "wireless" now. here's sarah's words:

Emery is improving each day, becoming more like herself. She is charming all of the nurses with her sweet little voice and smile.We have tried a bottle with water the last couple days and she is no where near being ready to eat again, let alone nurse. She may be sent home with the feeding tube but I am hoping that will not happen. I am anxious to start nursing again, I miss that time with her and it is so hard to watch her get hungry and I can't do anything about it.

All in all, things are looking up. I've started to write down the things I'm thankful for in all of this, it helps me when I start feeling weary and discouraged. We have a long road ahead of us, she will be needing a lot of therapy to get back to normal, which will continue well past when we are sent home back into our normal routine. We thank you all for your continued prayers and support. Specifically pray that she will be able to eat again soon. God is faithful.

there is a saying at my parent's church, "God is good all the time. All the time God is good."

it is so true. had Sarah not paid attention, or waited longer to call the doctor, or God not been good the unfathomable could have happened.

please join me in lifting them up. we must pray for patience. rest. peace. healing. and specifically that she won't need her feeding tube soon. i know they appreciate all the prayers and thoughts being sent to them right now.